Giants fans have another fresh reason to feel good about the Dexter Lawrence trade, and it has less to do with what the Giants got back than with what the league seems to think of Lawrence now.
Outside the analytics crowd, there’s a growing sense that New York moved on at the right time. Lawrence still posted strong Pro Football Focus grades, but last season he also looked less motivated and a step slower. That’s a sharp turn for a player who had spent years as a consensus top-5 defensive tackle.
His standing around the league has slipped, too. In a recent ESPN piece, NFL coaches, front-office personnel and scouts ranked the top 10 defensive tackles, and Lawrence came in at No. 7 after sitting at No. 1 a year earlier.
That drop is part of why one note from Jeremy Fowler stood out: an unnamed NFC scout said Lawrence will be “rejuvenated” on the Bengals.
That kind of comment only strengthens the case that the Giants made the right call. If a trade is being framed as a fresh start for the player leaving, that tells you plenty about how the situation looked in New York. And while that view came from one unnamed scout, it’s not hard to imagine it reflects a broader feeling around the league.
The Giants’ side of the move also makes sense when you strip away the noise. April’s trade can be viewed as a swap for Francis Mauigoa, and that’s not an unfair way to look at it.
More broadly, New York got out from under an expensive player who no longer wanted to be there. Lawrence had publicly demanded a trade, and even a new contract can only smooth things over so much.
There’s still an argument to be made for Lawrence’s supporters. No one is claiming he’s clearly worse than D.J. Reader and Shelby Harris on paper, and the Giants also lost Roy Robertson-Harris to a likely season-ending Achilles injury.
Still, if last season was the start of Lawrence’s decline, then the Giants absolutely made the right move.
Even after the trade, New York looks built to at least stay competitive in the NFC East. The bigger question is whether Lawrence would have given them a better shot at getting back to the postseason. That depends on how much faith you had in him to put the tension behind him, or whether the awkwardness would have lingered even after the extension.
For now, the trade tilts in the Giants’ favor, at least for now. Lawrence will have to wait a while before he gets a shot at revenge against his old team, because the Bengals and Giants won’t meet unless they run into each other in the Super Bowl.
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