Big Blue View
One of the big mysteries of the 2025 NFL season is how little impact New York Giants defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence has had so far. The Giants’ edge defenders, Brian Burns, Kayvon Thibodeaux, and rookie Abdul Carter, have each had good seasons to date. The thinking was that a healthy Lawrence, returning after an elbow dislocation in Dallas last season, would create no room to hide for beleagured quarterbacks. To some extent that has occurred: The Giants are tied for 12th in the NFL in both sacks (19) and total pressures (61). Not much of that has come from Lawrence, though, who doesn’t have a sack yet this season.
Former Giants great Carl Banks called out Lawrence after Sunday’s game against the Eagles, during which Lawrence had a half-sack, three assisted tackles and one QB hit. His Pro Football Focus grade of 47.6 was his lowest since Week 12 of the 2021 season, when he had a 44.1 grades against the Eagles. All of this while Philadelphia backup center Brett Toth was often handling Lawrence one-on-one.
Here is Banks’ criticism on the ‘Bleav in Giants’ podcast:
Are we just imagining it? Is he still limited by his elbow? Is it Shane Bowen’s fault? (Everything else about the Giants’ defense is blamed on him.) Lawrence will only be 28 next month, but maybe seven seasons of wear and tear have taken their toll on a 350-pound man.
Let’s first try to establish whether this concern is even a real thing. Below is a plot showing Lawrence’s Pro Football Focus individual game pass rush grade since the start of the 2021 season. I’ve applied a three-game rolling average to the numbers to beat down the noise somewhat:
I’ve labeled the plot with some significant NFL “life events” for Lawrence. The first was the start of the Brian Daboll regime in the 2022 season, and specifically his hire of Andre Patterson as defensive line coach (Game 17 on the chart). In 2021 Lawrence was a pretty good but not great pass rusher, with PFF pass rush grades typically in the upper 60s to low 70s. That all changed in the 2022 season when Patterson moved him further inside as a nose tackle. You can see it in his PFF pass rush grades, which leapt to the 70s-to-high-80s range.
Things were just peachy until the Giants collapsed in the 2023 season, and with the team losing most weeks and looking inept almost all the time, Joe Schoen decided to get some draft capital for fellow defensive line-mate Leonard Williams, who was in the last year of his contract. That happened just before Game 43 on the chart. There really wasn’t any noticeable change in Lawrence’s performance the rest of that season, with his pass rush grades staying in the 70-90 range. Things began to change in 2024, though. Grades above 75 were no longer occurring and Lawrence was down in the 60s much of the time. Then...
