At 27, Bryce Huff called it a career, having played just six seasons in the league. He didn’t leave the NFL for his health or for a broadcast booth; he left to build something most fans have never heard of, tied to a danger most people don’t think twice about. Huff’s new project matters more to him than any sack total.

“I feel like we’re going to save a lot of lives and protect a lot of companies,” Huff told Vic Tafur of The Athletic.

Bryce Huff and his brother, Jordan, now run a company called Naberstone, which has devised a mechanism to suppress fires in lithium-ion batteries.

“I would say the biggest place right now is your home,” Jordan Huff said on NFL Spotlight this March. “I mean, Bryce kind of touched on it earlier. You have multiple devices with lithium-ion batteries, from a phone, a laptop … You may have an e-scooter, e-bike, or even an electric vehicle. And what we see often is that people use these third-party chargers that aren’t compatible with their device. And what that does, it causes the battery to overheat. It sends it into a thermal runaway.”

“ You hear about blocks of New York burning down due to e-bikes and scooters and things like that,” Bryce added. “We feel like we are able to come in, provide that infrastructure, stop these possible losses, save the things that people have built, whether it’s a data centre or someone’s home or the waste and recycling industry as a whole. They’re suffering from battery fires every day. And the numbers are only going to continue to grow with the rapid adoption of lithium-ion batteries.”

According to his interview with The Athletic, Bryce Huff has put his own money behind it. He’s funded Naberstone using some of the $40.6 million he made over his NFL career. The company now has six employees, and one major customer is locked. Talks are underway with other parties, including the U.S. military, a large waste recycling firm, and interested groups overseas.

The career pathway does seem odd for a former NFL player, but the former defensive end has some scientific background. According to the interview, Huff initially studied mechanical engineering while he was playing for the Memphis Tigers in college. It was only after the budget cuts that laid off one of his favorite professors that Huff turned to football full-time.

He went undrafted in 2020 but was signed as a UDFA by the New York Jets. It ended up being a short stay for Huff in the league, but he managed to create something good out of it.

Inside Bryce Huff’s NFL career

“I needed to clear my mind; I was stressed seeing the picks drop down and my name not being called,” Huff told Eagles insider Owen Boyle. “I looked over the tree line, cleared my mind, and focused on how I wasn’t going to let going undrafted define who I was as a player.”

Little did Huff know that it would take him some time to make this possible.

It wasn’t until 2023 that everything fell into place, when he registered a career-high 10 sacks playing under head coach Robert Saleh. This performance earned him a three-year, $51 million contract with the Philadelphia Eagles. The figure was among the highest free agent signings that year.

However, this stint didn’t go quite as planned. Huff managed just 2.5 sacks, missed five weeks due to a wrist injury, and didn’t return until late December. He was even inactive for the Super Bowl, but still walked away a champion when the Eagles beat the Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX.

Huff was traded to the San Francisco 49ers in 2025. He recorded a career-high 30 tackles, but that was it for the defensive end. He announced his retirement in March 2026.

But Huff is looking forward to this new chapter in his life.

“Going into the NFL, I couldn’t really put my love for engineering to good use,” he told Tarfur. “But now I feel like since we’re working with engineers on a day-to-day basis, it’s just as good as actually being an engineer myself.”