One day after New York Giants star Dexter Lawrence made his trade demand public, head coach John Harbaugh said he wants Lawrence on the Giants and believes the defensive tackle wants to stay with the team.
“I’m not surprised by it; we’ll try to work through it and see what we can get done,” Harbaugh said during a Zoom call with reporters Tuesday. “I think the prospects (of Lawrence staying with the Giants) are going to be high. Speaking for the Giants, we want Dexter here. And I believe Dexter wants to be here. That’s a good formula, but there’s business involved.”
Lawrence was not in attendance for the start of the team’s voluntary offseason workouts on Tuesday. While Harbaugh said he spoke with Lawrence a few times early when he first got hired, they’ve not spoken recently — once the conversation became a business discussion, Lawrence’s agent, Joel Segal, preferred that the Giants go through him instead. Harbaugh said he’ll be “involved as a head coach should” in the negotiation process, so he’ll have conversations with GM Joe Schoen and Dawn Aponte, the team’s senior vice president of football operations and strategy, but he won’t be involved as far as any negotiating.
When asked how he’d be willing to entertain Lawrence’s request for a trade, Harbaugh went back to that it’s a business: “Well, I don’t know if granting a request is really the right way to say it, because it doesn’t really work that way. It’s not like a Christmas gift. It just doesn’t work like that. It’s business. So the business is to be the best football team that we can be, and the business for him, I’m sure, is to be the best player he can be. And then there’s financial obligations, restraints, opportunities, all those things that go around that because it’s pro football. …. So that’s really what it boils down to. We’ll see what happens.”
Harbaugh has been through a star player making a public trade request before. In 2023, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson announced on social media that he’d requested a trade, saying the Ravens have “not been interested in meeting my value.” The two sides resolved the dispute, with Jackson signing a five-year, $260 million contract extension in April. One difference now is that Harbaugh had a pre-existing relationship with Jackson.
“I think it’s the same in the sense of it’s just understanding it’s part of the business of the job and and it’ll get it resolved,” Harbaugh said. “It’s going to work out. Dexter wants to play. We want him to play. How it’s all going to shake out, we don’t control that. We’re not given to know the future. And the only thing we really can’t control is the outcome. But what we can control is how we approach it along the way, with respect. All these players in this league, all the coaches in this league, all the front office people in the league all deserve to be highly respected. It’s high-level business, it’s high-level football, and I’m sure it’ll be handled in a real high-level way, like that, and I’m not worried about it.”
Harbaugh said cornerback Paulson Adebo and defensive tackle Sam Roberts were the only other players not in attendance on Tuesday. Harbaugh did not know why Adebo wasn’t in attendance but stressed it’s his right given the workouts are voluntary. Roberts can’t travel as he waits for stitches to heal from a surgery. Wide receiver Malik Nabers, who is recovering from a torn ACL and meniscus, was there the first day; Harbaugh said Nabers’ timeline to return is “into training camp, closer to the season.” The timeline of running back Cam Skattebo, who suffered a gruesome ankle injury in October, is ahead of Nabers’.
