This week's entrée into the "Classic Jurassic Meat-Eater Matchup" strikes right to the heart of the blood sport that is the trenches. There you will find the largest and meanest meat-eaters on the field.
And this week we have a dilly of a matchup, featuring 6-foot-5, 300-pound Steelers center, Ryan McCollum, making his third-career start, while locking horns with the Giants nose tackle Dexter Lawrence.
So, just who is this guy, Dexter Lawrence? Let's have Mike Tomlin introduce him to you.
"Dexter Lawrence is a problem," Tomlin said this week. "He's a problem in the running game. He's a problem in the passing game. I think he leads the NFL in sacks but he's just a dominant, dominant player."
Yeah, he's a problem alright. A BIG problem. Standing 6-foot-4 and crushing the scale at a weighty 342 pounds, Lawrence plays the run like a bonafide nose tackle, and the pass like an edge rusher. As a matter of fact, Lawrence is leading the league, including the edge rushers, in sacks with 9 through 7 games. It's almost unheard of to have an interior defensive lineman doing this in this day and age of specialty edge rushers.
So dominant is Lawrence, he has been double-teamed on 63.3 percent of his pass-rush snaps this season, according to NextGen Stats. And when you flip on the video, he holds his own on those double-teams quite well.
Besides being a ferocious quarterback hunter and his league-leading QB pelts, Lawrence has registered 24 tackles (17 solo), added 13 quarterback hits and 7 tackles for loss through 7 games.
Part of his great talent in chasing down QBs or RBs is his speed. You might not think him to be fast, but Lawrence ran an official 5.05 40-yard dash at the 2019 NFL Scouting Combine. Lawrence's 40-yard dash time was one of the fastest ever recorded for a defensive lineman, especially one that size. With pads on he weighs closer to 360-pounds plus, and moving at a clip like his forty-time, we're talking about his hitting power to be more akin to a runaway train than a human being.
Holding the point of attack sometimes looks like child's play for Big Dex. He reminds me of the character played by Andre the Giant in the movie "Princess Bride." The 7-foot-4, 500-plus pound Andre remarks at one point that he rarely fights guys one-on-one, normally he's fighting multiple guys or "gangs." So does Lawrence.
Without a doubt, he's going to be a challenge. McCollum is going to need help. Stra-tee-gery in blocking assignments, adding to the already impressive percentage of double teams Lawrence faces, making him have to run sideline to sideline, cut block him whenever you get a chance to tire him out a little and employing mis-direction will all play a role in the battle royale that is sure to ensue post kickoff in the trenches.
Due mainly to the prodigious pass rushing skill of Lawrence, the Giants lead the league in sacks with 31. His linemates Azeez Ojulari and Brian Burns each have chipped in four sacks apiece. But make no mistake about it, Lawrence is the "pack leader," in the Giants' front end. It all starts there.
