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:
What has happened to Dexter Lawrence?
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:
Data from Pro Football Focus
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 the elbow dislocation (what is it with Giants players and dislocations?) prematurely ended his 2024 season after Game 62. He’s played every game this season so far, but his grades have remained in the 60s…with the exception of the last two games, in which he has received pass rush grades of 89.7 in Denver and 77.0 in Philadelphia this past Sunday. He still hasn’t registered a sack in 2025, however.
I know, I know, you don’t believe in PFF grades. OK, here are some hard stats for each of Dexter Lawrence’s four “eras”:
- 2021 (Games 1-16): Pre-Andre. 0.2 sacks per game, 7.2 total pressures per game.
- 2022-2023 (Games 17-42): Andre + LW. 0.5 sacks per game, 4.4 pressures per game.
- 2023-2024 (Games 43-62): Post-LW but pre-elbow. 0.6 sacks per game, 2.8 pressures per game.
- 2025 (Games 63-70): Post-elbow. 0 sacks per game, 2.0 pressures per game.
So Lawrence’s sack rate increased markedly when Patterson came on board up until his elbow injury. That came at the expense of total pressures which have systematically declined. This year so far the sacks are not there and the pressure rate has continued to drop. Conceivably, the elbow is not yet fully healed.
I have no explanation for that. Statistically, though, two other things are happening to Lawrence:
- He is being double-teamed more than almost any other interior defensive lineman. Per PFF (numbers do not include last weekend’s games):
Courtesy of Pro Football Focus
Interestingly, ex-linemate Williams is fifth on this list…but LW has four sacks this year.
There’s one other thing that I don’t think I’ve seen discussed yet. Lawrence’s explosion under Andre Patterson came when Lawrence was moved to nose tackle (A-gap) from his previous life rushing mostly from the B-gap. For some reason, though, the Giants do not have him rushing the A-gap as often this season so far:
Courtesy of Pro Football Focus
Lawrence is actually rushing on a higher percentage of his snaps (253 of 375, or 67%) this year than in his breakout 2022 season (577 of 977, or 59%). However, he is aligning in the B-gap almost as often as in the A-gap this season. Actually, this is a several year trend. In 2022 he aligned in the A-gap 2.2 times as often as in the B-gap (660 vs. 299). In 2023 there was even more of a disparity, 2.8 times more often in the A-gap. In 2024 that decreased a bit to 2.0 times as often in the A-gap, and this year his snaps in the A-gap and B-gap are almost identical. There has also been a slight uptick in how often he lines up over tackle, though nothing like it was during the Patrick Graham era. That doesn’t answer Banks’ question about why he’s being stonewalled by the likes of Brett Toth this season, but perhaps it’s part of the puzzle. Perhaps it’s as simple as the fact that no one has yet satisfactorily replaced Williams on the Giants’ interior defensive line; Williams was the Giants’ stalwart in the B-gap when he and Lawrence played together.
Whatever the answer, a return to form by Dexter Lawrence is sorely needed the rest of this season, since it doesn’t look like the second and third levels of the Giants’ defense are going to win many games for them.
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