James Watson has died

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson

There's the experimental data, and then there's the theoretical model.

Watson and Crick were already working on a theoretical double helix model prior to discovering Franklin's x-ray crystallography data, but at the time their model was wrong.

Franklin produced the x-ray crystallographic data that completed the picture and produced the correct working model. Franklin could have also figured out the double helix model herself using her own data and extensive crystallography background, but Watson and Crick were laser focused on only this one problem and beat her to it.

Franklin was robbed of the recognition she deserved, and Watson and Crick should have co-credited her at minimum. But it's incorrect to say that Watson and Crick weren't about to figure it out themselves.

Franklin tragically died of cancer a few years after the discovery and was ineligible to receive a posthumous Nobel Prize. She was only 37.