Giants DT Dexter Lawrence is truly one of a kind: Film Breakdown

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I've never really seen anything like what Dexter Lawrence did to the New York Jets in Week 8. And if I have seen it before, it's been from Dexter Lawrence in another game. he had 15 pressures in a sack and 95. 0 PFF grade and a 40 percent pass rush win rate. most of those came from a nose tackle alignment. 12 of those 15 pressures were at noses, which is the highest from a single game since 2015. 

Dexter Lawrence has four of those. And this game was definitely on the extreme end, but he's been doing stuff like this all season. It would be faster for me to tell you the statistical categories that he doesn't lead the NFL in but he ranks first among defensive linemen in PFF grade, pressure rate, total pressures, pass rush win rate really we've just never seen anything like this from the nose tackle position. 

He started off the game going up against Connor McGovern. I just can't imagine, from the standpoint of a center, how difficult it is to snap the ball and immediately have two hands inside driving you back into the pocket you can see so quick and accurate with that hand placement. He uses what's called the Hump move or the Underhook, where you're basically pushing up through one armpit. And you can see with the offhand, he's preventing the center from establishing contact, driving him back into the pocket, and he gets a hit on Zach Wilson.

Similar play right here, he's lined up shaded over towards the snapping hand of the center. So that hand that he's using to snap the ball, He's going to be a half second late establishing his punch. And he's able to just fold him backwards, pressing against that side. Again, he uses the right hand to defeat the offhand of the center. And then once he beats him with power, he finishes him off with a swim move. Kayvon Thibodeaux bends around the edge and gets the sack. On this play, he's lined up at a two technique over the right guard. Connor McGovern's thinking, alright, I gotta play off. 

Snaps the ball, Dexter Lawrence is right in his face, clubswim over the top, guard has to slide over and help. Now on this play he ends up injuring Connor McGovern, I'm gonna blur out this injury because it's pretty nasty. But the power is just relentless. As far as designing pressures for this defense, you just have a guarantee that you're going to get four yards of pocket displacement right up the middle. And then you can send whatever stunts and twists you want around that to clean everything up. 

So McGovern's outta the game, but Dexter Lawrence's dominance just continued. Really the only thing that changed when the jet switch centers is that the Giants started to run more stunts. To start out the game. Dexter Lawrence was just winning one-on-one every snap. And then over the last three quarters he was continuing to win, but the Giants were creating a lot more confusion up front. He was just relentless with the swim move when the blocker lowers his head into contact, he disengages, swims over the top, gets to the quarterback. and against backup centers especially, he can just fire off the ball and win with power. 

Right here he just moves Xavier Newman into Zach Wilson's lap, ends up throwing up a prayer down the field and a Adoree' Jackson gets ADPI. The Giants defense is kind of the last thing you can complain about with this game. But if they just got a little bit better cornerback play, this would've been a win. And what separates Dexter Lawrence from a lot of these pure pass rushing three techniques is that he's such an elite run defender. Right here he just deconstructs this down block, Breece Hall gets the handoff; immediately Dexter Lawrence is right in his face he can run with sweeps and toss plays, keep up with him, step for step, chase him down from the backside.

And he's a great two gapper right here. He long arms the block to create separation. Shades over into the a gap to force him to cut outside. and then once he makes his decision, he sheds the block, makes the tackle. I get that generational is overused and everyone hates that term. But if Dexter Lawrence isn't a generational nose tackle, then I don't know what is. 

To be able to consistently make this high of an impact in run defense, and be the best pass rushing nose tackle in modern NFL history, to me, that's worthy of the word generational, but regardless of the semantics, we are watching a historic, one of a kind type of player.