I found myself in the same boat as everyone else in this thread. I managed to find a solution for myself at my local Goodwill. How useful this info might be to anyone else is probably limited, but I present to you the Targus CUD1 from circa 1997.
Created in a time when laptops had 10" screens and were as thick as dictionaries. This absolute unit of a bag was designed to carry a laptop and some other device (such as a printer). Now it holds a Framework 16 with dGPU quite well vertically. Horizontally it needs some filler (right now I’m using the stand I bought for it wrapped in bubble wrap).