It was only a matter of time before this move went down for the NY Giants and general manager Joe Schoen. When it comes to stud defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence, he's one of the best in the business and he's going to be around East Rutherford for a long time.
With that said, we've been waiting on Schoen to restructure his contract to create needed cap space for this team. That's exactly what has happened, as ESPN's Field Yates is reporting that the Giants and Schoen converted $10 million of Sexy Dexy's base salary into a signing bonus for the All-Pro DT. With that, $7.5 million in cap space has been added for NY to work with. Boom.
The Giants have restructured DT Dexter Lawrence’s contract by converting $10M of his base salary into a signing bonus.
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) March 21, 2024
The move creates $7.5M in 2024 cap space.
The Giants have created $7.5 million in cap space thanks to the Dexter Lawrence news
After his electric showing from start to finish in 2022, Schoen rewarded Lawrence for his efforts with a four-year, $90 million extension. That contract included $60 million in guaranteed money. No one blinked twice about this, as Lawrence 100 percent deserved it.
While Lawrence's stats dropped a bit in 2023, and the Giants finished a lowly 6-11 on the year, that doesn't take away from the fact that he was absolutely dominant in the trenches. Lawrence was a total force and he reminded everyone of why he earned his payday in the first place.
Having said that, Schoen has been busy improving this team on both sides of the ball this offseason. This includes trading for Brian Burns, while also signing Jon Runyan Jr., Devin Singletary, Jermaine Eluemunor and others.
With about $2 million in cap space before the Lawrence news dropped, it was clear Schoen was going to have to get creative to have more money available to him for the rest of the offseason and the NFL Draft. Luckily, he and Lawrence were able to get something done. Next up, it's time to restructure the Andrew Thomas contract as well.