Philadelphia Eagles: Grading the NFC East’s Day 1 selections
When the Giants decided to trade Damon ‘Snacks’ Harris to the Detroit Lions for a fifth-round pick at the 2018 trade deadline, it left many fans around the league scratching their heads.
While Snacks isn’t an elite interior defensive lineman, as he’s pretty ineffective as a pass-rusher, he is among the prototypical nose tackles in the NFL, capable of clogging up multiple running lanes in the middle of a 3-4 defense.
With Harris gone, the Giants still trotted along with players like Dalvin Tomlinson and B.J. Hill, but they were clearly worse off without the 353-pounder in the middle of their brand new 3-4 defense.
So with the 17th pick, New York found their new Harris in Clemson defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence.
Though there’s a lot to like about Lawrence, as he’s a leader, a talented player, and a big reason why Clemson won two national championships in three years, technically speaking, he’s only a marginal improvement over Harris.
In three-years at Clemson, Lawrence never eclipsed seven sacks in the season, and finish out his career with only 10, seven less than Josh Allen had in 2018.
Sure, finding a sack-happy nose tackle is incredibly rare, but when a team’s selecting in the middle of the first round, it’s hard not to be at least a little bit confused why they’d pick a player doesn’t get after the quarterback.
With the second-fewest sacks of any team in the league last season at 30, and their best pass-rusher, Olivier Vernon, now a member of the Cleveland Browns, one has to wonder how much of an impact Lawrence will have as a rookie, and over his tenure with the team.
Sure, he can help to collapse the pocket, which as fans in Philly know from Fletcher Cox is a major advantage, but until he can become a more defined pass-rusher, this pick feels a bit odd.