A contract standoff that spans multiple offseasons reached a possible impasse on Monday as New York Giants defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence requested a trade. The two-time All-Pro defender has been among the NFL’s most formidable interior forces throughout his seven-year career and seeks to be compensated as such but is set to enter the 2026 season as the league’s 11th-highest-paid defensive tackle.
If the Giants fulfill Lawrence’s request and place him on the trade block, he would immediately be the best available player on the market. In fact, if teams are confident he can bounce back from a down year, they may very well view him as the top prize of the entire offseason.
NFL players ahead of last season voted Lawrence as the No. 17 overall player in the league. For comparison’s sake, new Baltimore Ravens edge rusher Trey Hendrickson (No. 14) is the only man ahead of Lawrence on the Top 100 list to sign with a new team this offseason. Such a marginal difference in the rankings leaves open a firm argument, at least among his peers, that Lawrence would be the headliner of this year’s roster changes.
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That vote came before the worst year of Lawrence’s career, though. Holding him in the same esteem as a star like Hendrickson requires the belief that 2025 was a blip rather than a sign of a mid-career decline. Lawrence’s four tackles for loss last year were his fewest since his rookie year, and he managed just a half sack after racking up nine the year prior.
It does not take much imagination to foresee Lawrence returning to the highest tier of production. For one, his recent letdown can be partially attributed to the elbow dislocation that cost him part of the previous season and lingered into 2025. This is also a three-time Pro Bowler who still has another year before he hits age 30.
But because there is enough uncertainty about his 2026 outlook and beyond, and because it would behoove the Giants to bring him back, Lawrence may not even be on the move in the first place.
Evaluating Lawrence’s market
If the Giants sought to trade Lawrence before his elbow injury in November 2024, they could have reasonably set their asking price at two first-round picks. That’s the going rate for the best defensive linemen with Micah Parsons commanding a pair of top picks in last summer’s trade and Maxx Crosby being valued at two first-rounders before last month’s deal between the Las Vegas Raiders and Baltimore Ravens fell through.
On the heels of a serious injury and the letdown campaign that followed it, however, the Giants would be hard-pressed to ask for much more than half of that trade package. Run defense-needy teams ought to still value Lawrence enough to swap a first-round pick for him, but anything more than that would be gravy for the Giants until he proves to be back in prime form.
At that price, why not continue working towards a long-term deal that keeps him around?
If the negotiations get uglier in the months to come, though, or if Lawrence’s request sparks the interest of potential buyers, there are a handful of teams who would be unsurprising if they showed interest.
CBS Sports’ Zach Pereles identified four ideal landing spots for the former first-round pick. None are as tantalizing as the Los Angeles Chargers, who still have the cap space necessary to make a splashy move and who have room for Lawrence in the middle of what would become a terrific defensive front. Perhaps the Houston Texans — who seem poised to take a defensive lineman in the draft — have interest in adding to what is already an elite unit.
This year’s draft class is less compelling than the 2027 batch, and there is plenty of defensive line and edge rusher talent to be had outside of the first round. Perhaps that would compel one of those teams to part with their first-round pick to acquire Lawrence.
Why the trade won’t happen
Nothing is stopping the Giants from simply keeping Lawrence. Trade requests are standard negotiating procedures. Plus, the offseason workouts Lawrence is set to skip because of the negotiations are voluntary anyway. There is no immediate urgency to send him out of town rather than to continue working toward a contract extension or revised deal.
That would change if the standoff rolls deep into the summer, but for now, there is no real reason to believe the Giants have more to gain from shopping Lawrence than by continuing their contract talks.
Plus, there is the actual on-field impact of it all. Only the Cincinnati Bengals fielded a worse run defense than the Giants last year, and moving on from a star defensive tackle is not going to solve that problem. Plus, Lawrence was the seventh-highest-graded interior defender in pass rushing, per Pro Football Focus. A fully healthy Lawrence is exactly the kind of stalwart this maligned defense needs in order to turn things around.
New defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson ought to be given the opportunity to revitalize this unit schematically before the Giants’ brass makes dramatic roster overhauls with the removal of its top players. And if the goal is to take a step toward contention in Year 1 of the John Harbaugh era, it is hard to see how trading Lawrence gets that job done.
Also, as one Giants beat writer noted, if John Harbaugh wants Lawrence, something will eventually get done.Â
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