For all the control John Harbaugh demanded and received from the Giants prior to his hiring, there are some aspects to the job he cannot predict or know for sure what will come to be.
On what he likened to the first day of school, Harbaugh was brimming with even more enthusiasm than usual as he welcomed his players into the facility Tuesday for the first day of the offseason workout program.
But a key member of the team was missing, and Harbaugh could not say with any certainty if Dexter Lawrence will be in or out when it comes time to play the games.
“We’ll find out,” the new coach said.
Lawrence, the massive nose tackle, is steering clear of the voluntary workouts because he wants the Giants to augment his contract, a desire that led to his request to be traded.
This is not exactly a novel approach — agents often resort to this tactic — and sometimes it pays off, sometimes it does not.
Harbaugh cannot be certain which way this one will go. He knows what he wants to see happen, though, and expressed optimism that “I think the prospects are going to be high” that this gets resolved and Lawrence once again places his 340 pounds in the center of the Giants’ defensive line.
“The Giants, speaking for the Giants, we want Dexter here,” Harbaugh said. “I believe Dexter wants to be here. That’s a good formula. But there’s business involved. It’s a business proposition. We know it’s pro football. These things happen every year pretty much on every team. Not surprised by it. Saw it coming a few weeks back probably.”
What Harbaugh described as “good conversations” with Lawrence’s agent, Joel Segal, gave him an inkling that Lawrence being absent from the workouts was a possibility. The trade request? That might have caught the Giants by surprise.
“Try to work through it, see what we can get done,” Harbaugh said.
This ball is now in the court of general manager Joe Schoen and Dawn Aponte — who, as the new senior vice president of football operations and strategy, is the team’s chief negotiator.
There does not seem to be much of an appetite within the Giants to ante up big bucks to appease their disgruntled player. Lawrence is halfway through a four-year, $90 million contract he signed in May 2023. The Giants prefer Lawrence plays out the remaining two years on the deal.
They would also like to see Lawrence rebound from an alarming dip in production in 2025 and again state his case as one of the league’s most disruptive interior defensive linemen before considering a pay raise.
Could there be some sort of compromise? Sure. But if Lawrence, currently averaging $21.8 million per year, is looking to move into the range of the Eagles’ Jordan Davis and the Patriots’ Milton Williams (both at $26 million annually), that appears unlikely to happen. It feels as if a trade will happen only if the Giants are blown away with an offer.
It is not as if the Giants learned about Lawrence’s trade request then hit the phones to play “Let’s Make a Deal.”
“I don’t know that granting a request is really the right way to say it, because it doesn’t really work that way,” Harbaugh said. “It’s not like a Christmas gift, it just doesn’t work like that.”
The Giants want to add to the interior of their defensive line, believing they need a running mate alongside Lawrence. Not having him anchoring the middle of their line would open a gaping hole on a defense that was 31st in the league in run defense last season with him starting all 17 games.
“What I see is this,” new defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson said, “I see a big, physical man that owns the middle of the defense, that demands double-teams, that takes pressure off the linebackers.
“Dexter is still a productive player in the National Football League. You have to deal with him. We’ll see how it goes. But he’s a great football player.”
After his breakout 2024 season — a career-high nine sacks — Lawrence, who turns 29 in mid-November, asked for more money and the Giants added $3 million in incentives for him to earn. He had only a half-sack in 2025 but did earn $1 million in incentives. He is the league’s 12th-highest-paid defensive lineman and wants to move up that list.
With the Ravens, Harbaugh learned to deal with quarterback Lamar Jackson staying away from the offseason workouts more often than not.
“It’s a little different because I knew Lamar,” Harbaugh said. “It’s not quite that way with Dex, I don’t know Dex as well.
“It will get resolved, it’s gonna work out. Dexter wants to play, we want him to play. How it’s all gonna shake out, we don’t control that.”
