New York Giants fans are rightly concerned about whether or not the team has enough quality on the interior of the defensive line. That’s why newly-released rankings from ESPN of the top 10 defensive tackles in the NFL have to be painful.
Two former Giants stars, Leonard Williams and Dexter Lawrence are on that list. Williams, in fact, was named No. 1 on a list compiled using input from NFL executive, coaches, and scouts. Lawrence, coming off a down season, still checked in at No. 7.
ESPN said this
about Williams:
… he’s an absolute nightmare to block. Several offensive coaches did not hesitate to say Williams was the toughest player to guard last season.
“He was the most important player on that Super Bowl team,” an NFL coordinator said. “He’s the total package.”
Williams recorded 7.0 sacks and a 38.0% run stop win rate on his way to second-team All-Pro honors.
“You can line him up in front of the right tackle, the right guard, the center, the left guard, the left tackle — he can beat them all,” a veteran NFC defensive coach said. “He’s always had game-changing ability, and he’s putting it all together now. And those around him are making plays because of it too.”
About Lawrence:
Lawrence fell six spots, but the drop in his play isn’t that steep. The voting between the third and seventh spots was close. That said, Lawrence’s 0.5 sacks in 2025 were a career low, and he failed to make the Pro Bowl for the first time since 2021.
But no defensive tackle gets more attention from offensive lines. Lawrence faced a double-team 71.3% of the time in 2025, a league high for players with at least 300 pass-rush opportunities.
“I think he’ll be rejuvenated there,” an NFC scout said. “He wasn’t happy in New York. He’s got to keep his conditioning in check, but when he’s at his best, he’s next to impossible to block.”
Valentine’s View
I already made my feelings known in the video above, but I will reiterate them here. The Giants were right to trade both players.
Williams
In 2023, Williams was in the final year of a three-year, $63 million contract he got from then-GM Dave Gettleman after the Giants acquired Williams from the New York Jets at the 2021 NFL Trade Deadline.
He was a 29-year-old player who had always been good but rarely great. He also looked like a player who had begun to decline. After starting 114 straight games since being drafted in Round 1 by the Jets in 2015, he suffered, knee, elbow, and neck injuries in 2022 and missed five games. Those were the first missed games of his career.
In 2023, he had 1.5 sacks in eight games with New York. He was still good, but he was looked like his best days were behind him and was headed toward an offseason where he would be looking for another big contract. The old adage is that it is better to move on from a player a year too soon that a year too late. Faced with the choice of paying Williams or moving on, the Giants moved on.
They got a second-round pick that turned into Tyler Nubin, a fifth-round pick that turned into Marcus Mbow, and the financial flexibility to trade for Brian Burns, a star player who is four years younger. They made out just fine.
Yes, Williams has somehow played the best football of his career since landing with the Seattle Seahawks. No one, though, could have predicted that.
Lawrence
The Giants did not want to trade Lawrence. New head coach John Harbaugh wanted to make the three-time Pro Bowler, thought to be the game’s best pure nose tackle, the centerpiece of a defensive line he aimed to build into the best in the NFL.
Lawrence, tired of the losing, the constant starting over from scratch with new coaching staffs, and having seen players like Williams and Saquon Barkley move on from the Giants and succeed elsewhere, wanted nothing to do with it.
Lawrence received a one-year, $28 million extension after his trade to the Cincinnati Bengals. The Giants, I have been told by a reliable scource, offered Lawrence more years and dollars than that. He did not want the Giants’ money. He wanted to be elsewhere.
The Giants obliged. They ended up with the 10th pick in the draft in return and used it to select Francis Mauigoa, thus fortifying their offensive line.
“I look at it like a win, win, win. I think it was a win for everybody,” Harbaugh said. “For us, the most important thing was that it was a win for the Giants. That’s what we cared about the most. We wanted Dexter to be happy, but we wanted the Giants to be taken care of first. That was our responsibility.
“To get the 10th pick in the draft, and then to see it play out tonight, it’s pretty clear cut that it’s a W for us. Not that it wouldn’t have been a W to keep Dexter, it sure would have been. But that didn’t turn out to be possible. It wasn’t something that he was really prioritizing in the end.
“And that’s okay. That’s fine. He got an opportunity and the Bengals got an opportunity to get a great player, and, you know, it’s going to make their defense better. So everybody’s a winner on this one.”
The Giants did the best they could in a situation they were forced into, and came out of it well.
Now, can they build an effective defensive line out of D.J. Reader, Darius Alexander, and a collection of other players who have a lot to prove?
We’ll find out.
