Three-time Pro Bowl DT Dexter Lawrence requests trade from Giants: sources
· Yahoo Sports
NEW YORK — Star defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence has requested a trade from the New York Giants and will not report to the facility Tuesday, sources told the New York Daily News on Monday, lobbing a grenade into the start of John Harbaugh’s first offseason program as the team’s head coach.
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Lawrence, 28, asking out of town is not a shock even though it is big news. The two-time, second-team All-Pro’s discontent has been simmering to a boil for a couple years.
Since his last payday in May 2024, negotiations on a raise have not gone to his liking, and the Giants have won seven of their 34 regular season games.
Lawrence immediately recorded a career high nine sacks in 2024 in the first season of his new contract, which averages $22.5 million per season. But the Giants only were willing to add a few million of incentives onto his contract for 2025. Then the game-wrecking interior defensive lineman had a down year coming off surgery for a dislocated elbow.
Still, Lawrence is widely viewed as one of the most disruptive defensive players in the NFL when healthy, commanding frequent double teams. And while he has toiled in New York, he has watched three of his good friends and closest teammates leave town and win Super Bowls: the Philadelphia Eagles’ Saquon Barkley and the Seattle Seahawks’ Leonard Williams and Julian Love.
Harbaugh now arrives promising a more grueling practice regimen coming off a fired staff in former coach Brian Daboll and defensive line coach Andre Patterson, and Lawrence is being asked to lead this franchise out of the darkness without the proper compensation to back up what he means to the team’s bottom line.
Lawrence is due to make $20 million this season. He has two years remaining on his contract, which is tied for only the 11th best average annual value among defensive tackles in the league. That is well below the Kansas City Chiefs’ Chris Jones ($31.75 million), not to mention the New England Patriots’ Milton Williams ($26 million) and Eagles’ Jordan Davis ($26 million), among several others.
Harbaugh said at the NFL Combine in late February said that the D-tackle known as "Sexy Dexy" was a “cornerstone football player” whom the Giants “need.” But the coach had not met Lawrence in person yet at that point and seemed to underestimate how serious Lawrence’s doubt about the future was.
“I don’t think it’s my job to assure him,” Harbaugh said at the NFL Combine. “It’s like, ‘Let’s go to work together. We’re both together for a reason.’ I look at it that way. That’s just how I just view the universe. There’s purpose. So we’re Giants. He and I together. God brought us together for this very time. So what are we gonna do with it?
“I had that conversation with him,” the coach continued. “I feel like he feels that way. He’s excited. So I really don’t have to think that way, because I already know we’re there. How important is he? Really important. Super important. He’s a cornerstone football player. He’s more like a middle stone. He’s right in the middle. But he’s a very big stone and he’s a very active, athletic stone. So we want him in there. We want him. We need him.”
GM Joe Schoen, who received a D+ grade from his players in the NFLPA’s most recent polling, pretended at the NFL Combine that he didn’t even know why he was being asked about Lawrence as a possible trade chip or contract issue.
“I don’t know where the Dex stuff’s coming from,” Schoen said.
The GM noted that “nine sacks might have been an outlier the year before, so the expectation rises,” as an apparent defense of keeping Lawrence’s pay at status quo with his sack total dropping to 0.5 in 2025. Schoen also said “the plan is for Dexter to be on the roster” and he hadn’t received any trade calls on him.
When Schoen was asked about Lawrence’s contract again at the NFL Owners meetings last week, though, the GM’s tone was different in the word salad he offered on the subject.
“We have a lot of those conversations as we continue to build or to your point, open up money, like where can we do it?” Schoen said. “Can we do an extension with other players? What does that look like? We’re always having those conversations not only with Dexter but on other players, and that’s part of our mapping out the offseason and planning.”
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