Bryce Huff says he ‘knew pretty early on’ he ‘wasn’t a fit’ with the Eagles

The late-May trade that sent Bryce Huff from the Eagles to the San Francisco 49ers did not come as a surprise to the player involved in the transaction.

The writing had been on the wall long before then, according to Huff, even as early as training camp last year.

“I wanted a trade fairly early on just because of how things went in Philly,” Huff said recently on a podcast with the SF Niners YouTube channel. “I knew pretty early on that it wasn’t a fit.

“I knew a trade wasn’t going to happen during the season. But I just kind of talked to my agent about it, like when it’s all said and done I might need to step just to be able to put myself in the best situation to ball out and have a fruitful career.”

Huff, whom the Eagles off-loaded for a conditional fifth-round pick a year after signing him to a $51.1 million deal, was injured and unproductive during the 2025 season, one that ended with him as a healthy scratch in the team’s Super Bowl victory.

The defensive end said during his podcast interview that there was “a plethora of things that went down” during his time with the Eagles, but he declined to go into specifics.

» READ MORE: Thumbs up or down on the Eagles off-loading Bryce Huff? Our writers weigh in.

“I kind of knew where it was headed fairly early on in the season, probably even in training camp, if I’m being honest,” he said.

Huff’s comments about training camp weren’t new. During an interview with The Inquirer in New Orleans a few days before the Super Bowl, Huff shared that defensive coordinator Vic Fangio’s assessment of him early in training camp — saying that Huff’s becoming an every-down player was a “work in progress” — had an impact on him.

Huff was slow to adjust to Fangio’s scheme and was ticked off that people took what Fangio said and “ran with it.”

Huff’s frustration, he said in February, lasted for weeks early in the season.

“I would calm down and then look at my phone and some new [stuff] would pop up,” he said. “It was just one thing after another.

“I was just walking around mad all day. I know that’s not healthy mentally or physically, but I got that under control and I was really able to dial in and do my thing.”

That never really happened. For Huff, who tallied 2½ sacks in 12 regular-season games, being slow to adjust to Fangio’s scheme was only part of his problem with the Eagles. He also suffered a wrist injury that made his left hand basically unusable and eventually required surgery.

In the lead-up to the Super Bowl, Eagles general manager Howie Roseman said he believed Huff’s story with the Eagles was “yet to be written.”

“Now, I’m stubborn,” Roseman continued. “I understand that. I’m stubborn on a lot of things.

“I’ve seen it. It’s a little different for me in free agency with those kind of signings than it is maybe in draft picks in terms of you’ve seen them go against guys in the NFL and do things well. I just believe in the player.”

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Huff’s signing was a big mistake. But the Eagles structured Huff’s contract in a way that gave Roseman flexibility to restructure it before he was traded to the 49ers. That move, as well as the trade’s being processed after June 1, lessened the impact of the mistake. Still, it was one that carries financial implications.

In San Francisco, Huff is reuniting with Robert Saleh, the 49ers defensive coordinator who was his head coach with the New York Jets. Being back in a familiar scheme and with Saleh “feels like home,” Huff said on the podcast.

“I know what this scheme brings out of people,” he said.

Huff also knocked the bifurcated structure of the Eagles’ defensive line, where “interior was in one room, outside was in another, and it kind of put a little divide in there.”

“It’s all love at the end of the day,” Huff said later. “Even though I wasn’t a good fit, I got nothing but love and respect for all the guys on that team that worked their asses off the entire year to make that happen.”