EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — It took a while, but Dexter Lawrence II has finally reached his boiling point. The veteran defensive tackle requested a trade Monday, multiple sources told ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
If the New York Giants looked closely at Lawrence over these past few seasons, they could have seen this coming. He appeared unhappy as the Giants limped to a 7-27 record over the past two seasons, all while watching close friends like Leonard Williams and Saquon Barkley leave for greener pastures and go on to win Super Bowls.
The Giants put a Band-Aid on Lawrence’s contract situation last offseason by adding a potential $3 million in incentives to the $17 million he was owed. This offseason they have been reluctant, at least publicly, to significantly alter his $20 million salary for 2026.
The $20 million would place him 10th among all defensive tackles this year, according to the Roster Management System.
So Lawrence now wants out after one of his worst professional seasons, at least statistically. He had just 31 tackles and 0.5 sacks, the lowest totals of his career, in 17 games.
Yet the Giants can’t just move on even if a strong trade offer lands in their lap. They’ve made moves this offseason based on the assumption that Lawrence would be a key piece to their defense. They were planning on him making a significant impact.
“He’s super, super important. He’s a cornerstone football player — not really a cornerstone, more like the middle stone,” new Giants coach John Harbaugh said at the combine in March. “He’s right in the middle. He’s a very big stone, and he’s a very active, athletic one.”
League sources have suggested the likely return for Lawrence in a trade would be a late first-round pick or a second-rounder. That alone would make it difficult for the Giants this season.
Defensive line is one of New York’s thinnest positions. Next in line behind Lawrence are Roy Robertson-Harris and second-year defensive lineman Darius Alexander.
The personnel may not be enough to sustain this unit even with Lawrence. New York has been clear about its intentions to still add to its defensive line, whether it be in the latter stages of free agency or the draft, where the position is considered rather deep and versatile.
“Obviously the O-line and D-line, we still got to do some work there,” general manager Joe Schoen said last week at the NFL’s annual meetings. “And again, like I said earlier, we’ve got time here. Three weeks ’til the draft.”
While that may be enough time to add depth, it’s a lot harder to reconfigure the entire offseason defensive plan without Lawrence. New defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson was especially bullish on keeping Lawrence this offseason, even though the team received calls about potential trades, a source told ESPN.
After internal discussions, the Giants were intent on moving along with Lawrence in the middle of their defense, in part because he’s a player who demands respect. Lawrence was second among all players last season with a 55.5% double-team rate, according to NextGen Stats. He was still fourth on the Giants with 14 run stops.
Addressing the defensive line — and run defense in particular — has been a priority for Harbaugh and the Giants this offseason. Trading Lawrence, especially at this point, would seem counterproductive. He has a 32% run stop win rate (which ranks among the top half of the NFL) since entering the league as a first-round pick out of Clemson in the 2019 draft.
The Giants have struggled stopping the run the past few seasons. They were 31st in the NFL in rushing defense last year and allowed a league-worst 5.3 yards per carry. Harbaugh has made it a priority to improve the team’s run defense — adding bigger, more physical corners and middle linebacker Tremaine Edmunds.
Next up was supposed to be bolstering the defensive line — not replacing Lawrence.
“I think it has [improved], but I still think we’re a work in progress,” Harbaugh said of the team’s run defense. “We haven’t even taken the field yet for a workout. So stopping the run is not the easiest thing in the world. We have had great success most of the time, but also had moments where we didn’t do very well.
“And we need that. We just think it’s really important. I’ve told a lot of our guys, like it’s really a big deal.”
Replacing Lawrence with rookies likely won’t help this season, and there aren’t any All-Pro linemen out there in free agency.
All this makes honoring Lawrence’s request unlikely at this stage of the NFL calendar. In that case, the Giants better pull out the checkbook to make it work for at least one more season.
