Despite a down 2025 season, by his own lofty standards, former Clemson star and new Cincinnati Bengals acquisition Dexter Lawrence remains one of the NFL’s best players at his position.

ESPN ranked the top defensive tackles in the league entering the 2026 season, based on votes from league executives, scouts and coaches. Lawrence checked in at No. 7, down six spots from his No. 1 ranking heading into the 2025 campaign.

Last year, in his seventh season with the New York Giants, Lawrence started all 17 games, tallying 31 total tackles, four tackles for loss, 0.5 sacks, eight quarterback hits, four passes defended and an interception that he returned 37 yards.

“Lawrence fell six spots, but the drop in his play isn’t that steep,” ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler wrote. “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.”

Although he didn’t enjoy the same level of success last year that he’s accustomed to, there’s no doubt Lawrence has established himself as a dominant interior defensive line presence in the league.

Lawrence collected three straight Pro Bowl selections from 2022-24 and also earned All-Pro honors in the 2022 and 2023 seasons. He became the first Giants player to be voted to three straight Pro Bowls since safety Landon Collins from 2016-18, and if he hadn’t suffered a season-ending elbow injury in 2024, he could have very well earned his third consecutive All-Pro selection as well.

Fowler noted that “no defensive tackle gets more attention from offensive lines” than the 6-foot-4, 340-pound Lawrence.

“Lawrence faced a double-team 71.3% of the time in 2025, a league high for players with at least 300 pass-rush opportunities,” Fowler wrote.

The Bengals made one of the biggest splashes of the offseason in April when they acquired Lawrence from the Giants in exchange for the No. 10 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft.

As part of the trade, the Bengals signed Lawrence to a one-year, $28 million contract extension that makes him one of the NFL’s highest-paid D-linemen and keeps him under contract with the Bengals for three years (through the 2028 season) at a total value of $70 million, adding to his previous deal.

“The Bengals acquired Lawrence via trade with the Giants, and the team is pleased with his leadership this offseason,” Fowler wrote.

“‘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.’”

Heading into his eighth NFL season in 2026, Lawrence has racked up 341 total tackles, 40 tackles for loss and 30.5 sacks in 109 career games (102 starts) since being selected by the Giants in the first round (17th overall) of the 2019 NFL Draft.

Leonard Williams of the Seahawks is No. 1 in ESPN’s defensive tackle rankings, with the rest of the top five being Jeffery Simmons of the Titans, Jalen Carter of the Eagles, Chris Jones of the Chiefs and Derrick Brown of the Panthers.