ESPN’s survey of executives, coaches and scouts, compiled by Jeremy Fowler, ranked Dexter Lawrence II the NFL’s No. 7 defensive tackle for 2026 — a six-spot fall for the Cincinnati Bengals acquisition, who topped the same list a year ago.
The ballot spread shows how divided the league is on him: Lawrence’s highest individual vote was third, his lowest was off the list entirely. The surface numbers from 2025 explain the skeptics. He managed half a sack, a career low, and missed the Pro Bowl for the first time since 2021. That is the season the Bengals bought when they sent the No. 10 pick in April’s draft to the Giants for him — a trade that looked like a bet against the box score at the time and still is.
Why it matters
The usage data explains the believers. Per ESPN, Lawrence faced a double-team on 71.3 percent of his pass-rush snaps in 2025, the highest rate in the league among players with at least 300 pass-rush opportunities. No defensive tackle commanded more attention from opposing lines, which is a strange profile for a player whose production cratered — offenses were still game-planning him like the best interior lineman in football even while the sack column sat empty. Fowler noted the drop in Lawrence’s actual play was not as steep as the drop in his ranking.
That gap between attention and production is the whole Cincinnati thesis. The Bengals’ defensive front spent last season letting opponents slide protection wherever they pleased; Lawrence forces a choice. Every double-team he draws in 2026 is a one-on-one for somebody else, and the survey result — seventh, with a third-place ceiling — suggests evaluators think the bounce-back is more likely than not. It also lands days after the same ESPN series left right tackle Amarius Mims off its top-10 offensive tackle list, so Cincinnati enters camp with the league’s perception split: skeptical of the line protecting Joe Burrow, warming back up to the man brought in to wreck the other side’s.
For fantasy, Lawrence is a name for IDP leagues with defensive tackle slots: his sack floor is volatile, but the double-team rate points to tackle volume and pressure production returning with better health and a new front. The indirect angle matters too — if he tilts protections the way Cincinnati expects, the Bengals’ edge rushers become the cheap beneficiaries in sack-heavy scoring formats.
