The Bengals traded the 10th overall pick to the Giants for Dexter Lawrence and then signed the defensive tackle to a one-year, $28 million extension.
The Bengals are happy, and Lawrence is happy.
“I know they gave up a lot for me, and I appreciate that. I don’t take that for granted. I have a fire in me,” Lawrence, who is under contract through 2028, told Geoff Hobson of the team website. “I picked up a little turf on the field. I got chills when I went out there. I just see myself helping this team be where it’s supposed to be. . . . I enjoy pressure. I enjoy being under that type of light. I write down notes, and my notes are, ‘Let my light shine all the time.’ And keep joy. Don’t let anything steal your joy.”
There is joy in Cincinnati, too.
Coach Zac Taylor said he has received calls and texts from players — including Orlando Brown Jr. and Ted Karras — since news of the trade broke Saturday night.
“Which is a sign there’s a lot of excitement,” Taylor told the team website. “I fielded a lot of calls from our offensive linemen. They’re happy they don’t have to face him in a real game again. Training camp should be fun.”
The deal is done. And the Bengals are happy about it.
Cincinnati has announced the trade that brings defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence from the Giants, in exchange for the tenth overall pick in the 2026 draft.
“The opportunity to add a player of Dexter’s ability was too good to pass up thanks to the commitment by Mr. Brown, Katie Blackburn, Troy Blackburn, Paul Brown, and our player personnel staff,” Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin said in a team-issued release. “Dexter fits the vision we have on our defense and will also elevate others around him. We are confident in Dexter and can’t wait to see the positive effects he and the other players we have acquired this offseason have on our football team. We are excited to turn to the draft and our remaining picks to further enhance our team.”
Coach Zac Taylor echoed Tobin’s enthusiasm.
“We are excited to add Dexter to our team,” Taylor said. “He has been a dominant player in the league since he was drafted, and he will be a tremendous presence on the field and in our locker room.”
The Bengals also announced that Lawrence has been signed to a one-year extension, which puts him under contract through 2028.
Thirteen days ago, Giants defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence asked for a trade. He has now gotten one.
He also has gotten a raise, with a one-year, $28 million extension. Given the new-money analysis that agents and teams apply to the vast majority of contracts, Lawrence’s new-money average moves to $28 million.
Are there guarantees beyond the $10 million roster bonus he’ll receive right away? No. Will the Bengals cut Lawrence before his $11 million base salary for 2026 becomes guaranteed as a practical matter at the start of the regular season? Why would they? They gave up the 10th pick in the draft to get him.
Given the investment, it’s unlikely he’ll be cut before 2027, either. Yes, it could happen. If it does, the Bengals would be admitting that they gave up a top-ten pick for very limited return.
If they cut Lawrence after two years, he still will have made more money over the next two seasons than the Giants would have been paying him. Under the prior deal, he would have gotten $39.5 million. Under the new deal, Lawrence is in line to make $47 million.
Here’s the real question. Would the Giants have given Lawrence the same deal he’s getting from the Bengals? No one knows the answer, because details regarding the negotiations haven’t been leaked.
At this point, it doesn’t matter. The Giants swapped the ability to keep Lawrence for the 10th pick in the draft. The Bengals have given up pick No. 10 for a three-year deal with Lawrence. Where it goes from here depends on how Lawrence performs — and what the Giants do with Cincinnati’s 2026 first-round pick.
Dexter Lawrence is headed to Cincinnati with a new deal.
The Bengals announced they’ve acquired Lawrence for the No. 10 overall pick on Sunday, meaning the trade is official.
PFT has confirmed Lawrence has agreed to a one-year contract extension, receiving $28 million in new money on the deal. He is now under contract through the 2028 season.
Here is the full breakdown of the contract, according to a source with knowledge of the terms:
1. Lawrence receives a $10 million roster bonus on the day of execution of the deal.
2. 2026 base salary: $11 million.
3. 2026 per game active roster bonuses: $1 million total.
4. 2027 option bonus: $8.25 million, to be exercised between the first and tenth day of the 2027 league year.
5. 2027 base salary: $15.5 million.
6. 2027 per-game active roster bonuses: $1 million total.
7. 2027 workout bonus: $250,000.
8. 2028 base salary: $21.75 million.
9. 2028 per-gamer active roster bonuses: $1 million total.
10. 2028 workout bonus: $250,000.
In all, it’s a three-year, $70 million deal with $42 million leftover and $28 million in new money.
If the handling of the Dexter Lawrence situation was the first real test of the John Harbaugh-Joe Schoen regime in New York, many will conclude they failed it.
They’re losing a premier talent who is still in his prime at age 28, in exchange for the tenth pick in the 2026 draft. There’s no guarantee the player they pick with Cincinnati’s first-round selection will ever become as effective as Lawrence was.
At the Scouting Combine, Harbaugh sang Lawrence’s praises in unequivocal terms. “He’s a cornerstone football player,” Harbaugh said at the time. “Not really a cornerstone. He’s more like the middle stone. He’s right in the middle. He’s a very big stone and he’s a very active athletic stone. So we want him in there being a big stone.”
Maybe it was puffery, aimed at getting more for the player in an eventual trade. Or maybe it was, you know, the truth. If so, something went haywire on the way to fixing a contract that he had outplayed.
That’s the reality of the out years of a multi-year deal. Once the significant guaranteed money is gone, the team can (and will) rip it up if the player isn’t deemed to be doing well enough. If the player overperforms and wants the deal to be fixed, there’s not much he can do about it.
Lawrence used the leverage available to him. And he got the trade he wanted. Presumably, the contract will come next.
Still, the next time Harbaugh and Schoen speak to reporters, they’ll be asked about more than what they did with a pair of top-10 picks. Someone will want to know why the situation went sideways. Lawrence wanted an adjustment that reflects the growth in the market and the ongoing rise in the salary cap, which has mushroomed from $182.5 million in 2021 to $301.2 million in 2026 — a 65-percent increase. The Giants didn’t get it done.
There will be internal dynamics that likely won’t be disclosed, unless they’re leaked. Harbaugh could blame Schoen for failing to get the deal done. And that could become another plank in the eventual case Harbaugh makes to hire his own G.M. Which felt inevitable even before the Lawrence situation failed to result in a new contract.
Much of the final analysis will depend on what Lawrence does with the Bengals this season. If he has a major impact on the Cincinnati defense, it could be another Saquon Barkley situation, with everything but the internal discussions broadcast to the world via offseason Hard Knocks.
The difference this time around is that the Giants got something in return. That puts extra pressure on the Giants to draft the right player at No. 10, and then to develop him quickly.
The Bengals have agreed to trade their first-round pick in the 2026 draft to the Giants for defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence. If/when the deal is done, it will be the first time the Bengals haven’t had a first-round pick in a very long time.
Via Rob Maaddi of the Associated Press, it last happened in 1989, when Troy Aikman was the first pick and four of the first five selections made it to the Hall of Fame. Aikman, Barry Sanders, Deion Sanders, Derrick Thomas got to Canton. Tony Mandarich, the second pick that year by the Packers, joined the short list of all-time draft busts.
That year, the Bengals held the 27th pick in a 28-team league, thanks to making it to Super Bowl XXIII. (The 49ers won the John Candy game on a late touchdown.)
In April of that year, the Bengals traded down from No. 27 to No. 35. Cincinnati also picked up a fourth-round pick (No. 89) and a tenth-round pick (No. 256) in what was one of the final years of the 12-round draft.
The Falcons selected receiver Shawn Collins with Cincinnati’s first-round pick. The Bengals picked running back Eric Ball with the 35th pick, linebacker Kerry Owens with the 89th, and defensive back Cornell Holloway with the 256th.
Collins played three years for the Falcons, generating 186 total receiving yards. Ball spent six years with the Bengals, producing 586 total rushing yards.
This proves yet again the very inexact nature of the incoming player-selection process. Which won’t be mentioned much this week. Under the guise of not raining on the parade of possibilities and plausible hope, few will point out that the draft is an inherent crapshoot with plenty of picks that don’t work out — either because of the player or because of the team that drafts him or because of some combination of the two.
Once the Dexter Lawrence trade is finalized, the Giants will have two picks in the top 10 of the NFL draft.
Again.
They have the No. 5 pick, which they earned the old-fashioned way: By being the fifth-worst team in the league last season. They’ll now inherit the Bengals’ pick, No. 10 overall.
That happened four years ago, when the Giants had their own pick (No. 5) plus the Chicago pick acquired when the Bears traded up in 2021 to get quarterback Justin Fields.
Last time around, it didn’t go very well. Defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux, the fifth overall pick, has performed well enough to have his fifth-year option exercised. The presence of Brian Burns and the selection of Abdul Carter with the third overall pick in 2025 clouds Thibodeaux’s future with the team.
Offensive lineman Evan Neal, taken with the seventh overall pick, has not panned out. He re-signed a one-year deal for the minimum salary after his four-year rookie deal expired.
This time around, Joe Schoen is still the G.M. But John Harbaugh is the head coach. They’ll need to nail at least one, and ideally both, of the selections. Pick the right guys, and then develop them the right way.
The fact that the deal was done five days before the draft becomes a complicating factor for the Giants. The teams picking behind the Giants will try to speculate on the player they want at No. 10. If a team guesses right and leapfrogs the Giants to the ninth spot (currently held by the Chiefs), the Giants will lose the player they may be coveting.
That’s why the best outcome would have been to keep the deal with the Bengals quiet until the pick was on the clock.
The Giants surely won’t admit to the world that they lost the guy they wanted, if someone jumps them in the pecking order and takes their guy at No. 9. Still, if it happens, they’ll know.
It’s possible, frankly, that the Giants have enough guys they want to take whoever is left after the first nine picks are made. If there are 10 players they’d be happy to have, they’re now guaranteed to get two of them.
Dexter Lawrence wanted out. And he’s getting his wish.
NFL Network reports that the Giants are trading the defensive tackle to the Bengals for the 10th overall pick in the 2026 draft. PFT has confirmed that the deal is in place.
Via Jordan Raanan of ESPN, the deal is subject to Lawrence passing a physical. Which means it won’t be final until he passes. That wrinkle needs to be resolved by Thursday, obviously.
The next question is whether the Bengals will address Lawrence’s contract on the way in. Our understanding is that it hasn’t happened yet, but that something is expected to occur sooner than later.
Lawrence was the 17th overall pick in the 2019 draft. Signed through 2027, Lawrence was due to earn $20 million in 2026.
He had been trying to get a new deal from the Giants, given the changes to the market for interior defensive linemen. Twelve days ago, Lawrence went public with his request for a trade.
Joe Flacco has played 209 games in his career, and he’s back with the Bengals this year at the age of 41. He has managed to keep going despite the wear and tear of 18 NFL seasons, but he has concerns about the season getting longer.
Flacco said that with NFL owners wanting to add a game to the regular season, he questions whether the 18-game season will turn into 20, and then 22, and whether the constant desire for more money will hurt the players, and the product on the field.
“It’s got to stop at some point,” Flacco told Front Office Sports. “What happens when we go to 18? Are they going to want 20? Are they going to want 22? We used to play 14 games before I was born. At some point it has to stop.”
Flacco said that he thinks players will eventually go along with the longer season and the more money that will come with it.
“If we’re asked to play 18 games, I think you’re not going to see much difference, and it looks like we’re probably eventually going to play 18 games, and we’ll just have to do it, and it is what it is,” Flacco said. “The revenue’s going to go up, and the salary cap is going to go up, and over time you are going to be making more money.”
Flacco thinks the quality of the playoffs has already been hurt by playing 17-game seasons.
“Ultimately it seems like we’re going to go there and we’re going to be able to do it,” Flacco said. “As a player I loved playing 16 games, and I think the NFL had an awesome formula for 16 games and four rounds of playoffs and it was super competitive. I don’t think people realize when you put guys through an 18-game regular season schedule, I think what could happen is the playoffs start to suffer. Teams are so beat up by that point in the year that they’re not at their best, so instead of getting top-level football you’re getting a couple teams going against each other at 75 percent.”
The NFL has announced the names of the current and former players that will take part in next week’s draft by announcing second-round picks.
The list includes players associated with all 32 teams, including Cardinals running back James Conner. Conner has strong ties to the Pittsburgh area after playing for the Steelers and attending Pitt, which likely made him an easy choice as the Cardinals’ representative.
Former Bears tackle Jimbo Covert, former Cowboys running back Tony Dorsett, former Chiefs defensive lineman Bill Maas, current Vikings tackle Brian O’Neill, former Jets running back Curtis Martin, and former 49ers punter Andy Lee are other Pitt alums who are set to take part.
The hometown team will be represented by four players. Former Steelers Jerome Bettis and John Stallworth will be joined by Joey Porter Sr. and Jr. next Friday.
The other players taking part and their team affiliations appear below:
Falcons: Michael Turner
Ravens: Mark Ingram
Bills: Shane Conlan
Panthers: Jake Delhomme
Bengals: Ken Anderson
Browns: Phil Dawson
Cowboys: Drew Pearson
Broncos: T.J. Ward
Lions: Calvin Johnson
Packers: John Kuhn
Texans: Billy Miller
Colts: Pat McAfee
Jaguars: Paul Posluszny
Raiders: Matt Millen
Chargers: Shawne Merriman
Rams: Tavon Austin
Dolphins: Dwight Stephenson
Patriots: Deion Branch
Saints: Marques Colston
Giants: Osi Umenyiora
Eagles: Brian Westbrook
Seahawks: Cliff Avril
Buccaneers: Ronde Barber
Titans: Jeffery Simmons
Commanders: Mark Rypien
