If the Dexter Lawrence trade was the true beginning of the John Harbaugh era, it opened to stellar reviews. The New York Giants’ haul was “huge,” “stunning,” and “unbelievable,” several NFL sources told me. It was widely hailed as a “steal.”
But as the initial praise of the shocking trade wore down on Saturday night, and everyone began to digest the fact that the Giants traded a three-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle in Lawrence to the Cincinnati Bengals for the 10th overall pick in the draft, those same sources kept asking the same question:
“What are the Giants going to do on defense now?”
It’s a fair question, with no immediate answer. It’s also why they didn’t really want to make this trade.
The Giants could have done this two weeks ago, a source told me, when the Bengals dangled the 10th overall pick almost as soon as Lawrence’s demand to be traded went public. Because as surprised and thrilled as the Giants were to find someone willing to give up a top-10 pick for their disgruntled star, they knew that the deal would leave their defense with a gaping hole.
“He’s a top-five defensive tackle in the league, and at his best, he might be the best,” one NFC scout told me. “Even in a down year, you see how other teams treat him. They constantly double- or even triple-team him. It doesn’t matter if it’s a run or a pass play either. His presence is the threat.”
Dexter Lawrence’s production took a hit in 2025 after a stellar 2024 campaign, but one NFC scout still called him a top-five defensive tackle in the league. (Photo by Ian Maule/Getty Images)
Harbaugh knew that. He had praised the 6-foot-4, 340-pound Lawrence as “not really a cornerstone” of the defense, but “more like the stone.” He insisted he needed Lawrence to fix a defense that ranked 28th overall and 31st against the run. So much of the hope and potential is wrapped in the edge-rushing trio of Brian Burns, Kayvon Thibodeaux and Abdul Carter. But even in what was widely considered one of his worst NFL seasons, Lawrence was at least the second-best defensive player on the team, and maybe the most important.
That’s why Harbaugh and new Giants vice president Dawn Aponte were working so hard to try to convince Lawrence to stay. They were willing to sweeten his contract a little, a source told me. They also tried to make a direct appeal to Lawrence, but his agent, Joel Segal, insisted that all the talking would be done through him.
But their full-court press didn’t work, so they felt they had no choice but to look at that top-10 pick “like a gift,” a team source told me, even if it left their defense dangerously thin in the middle of the front. Veteran defensive tackles Roy Robertson-Harris and Sam Roberts aren’t in Lawrence’s class. Neither is D.J. Reader, who was brought in for a visit last week. They are professional, solid veterans who can get the job done. But none of them has Lawrence’s ability to change a game.
[Dexter Lawrence Trade Grades: Why Big Move Could Have Huge Payoff for Giants, Bengals]
And the group’s pre-deal considerations went deeper than that, too. The Giants are nicely conscious of the general public notion that they battle to maintain their very own gamers. Followers are nonetheless stung from watching stars like Odell Beckham, Saquon Barkley, Julian Love and Xavier McKinney get shoved out the door, nonetheless of their prime, over the past decade. Internally, the Giants attribute that to an excessive amount of turnover within the entrance workplace and with the pinnacle coach — too many modifications in management and philosophy over the past 10 years.
However Lawrence felt completely different to them, particularly after normal supervisor Joe Schoen signed the Dave Gettleman first-round choose to a four-year, $90 million deal in 2024. He was well-liked and helpful, regardless of how dangerous the group struggled. They really appeared to need him to remain.
The beginning of a brand new period below John Harbaugh wasn’t sufficient to entice Dexter Lawrence to stay with the Giants. (Photograph by Justin Casterline/Getty Photos)
Lawrence left them with no selection, although. Sure, the Giants may have sucked it up and given him the additional one yr and $28 million that the Bengals gave him on Sunday. However a group supply instructed me the 28-year-old by no means requested for that, leaving the impression that he simply didn’t need to be a Big anymore. He had grown uninterested in all of the dropping and didn’t appear keen to offer a fourth coach an opportunity coming into his eighth season within the league— not even when that coach was Harbaugh.
And with Harbaugh as intent on constructing a brand new tradition and rebuilding the protection as he’s, the very last thing he wanted was a disgruntled star who wished to be someplace else.
The deal was barely simpler to abdomen as a result of there are legit questions on what Lawrence nonetheless is. His beautiful drop to only a half sack final season is commonly attributed to fixed double-teams. However as one scout instructed me, “You realize, he can beat these double groups, too.” In the meantime, there have been inner considerations about his weight final season, a supply instructed me, including, “He’s an amazing man, however his unhappiness was clear in every little thing he did.”
Nonetheless, the Giants understood that nearly as good because the deal was, it wasn’t what was greatest for them within the brief time period. There’s a league-wide perception that there isn’t prone to be a plug-and-play influence defender obtainable with the tenth choose — if there was, the Bengals certainly would’ve stored it. There may not even be a defensive sort out taken within the first spherical.
The Giants will certainly take one with their second-round choose (thirty seventh). And it looks like a lock one in all their two first-rounders — picks No. 5 and 10 — might be used on a defensive participant, maybe Ohio State security Caleb Downs. The items might be there for Harbaugh and new defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson to construct a protection that not less than ranks within the high half of the league. That’s one thing the Giants did solely as soon as within the seven years with Lawrence on their group.
In order that they have been dangerous with him and may be dangerous with out him, and now they not less than have an opportunity to rebuild the protection with youthful, brisker, and cheaper our bodies. What they substitute Lawrence with, although, may not be higher. They understood that.
That’s why this isn’t one thing they wished. It simply became one thing they needed to do.
