the NFL’s top defensive lines<\/a> heading into the 2025 campaign.<\/p>\nFollowing the addition of Abdul Carter on the edge, the Giants landed all the way up at No. 3.<\/p>\n
“Arguably no team has done more in the NFL to strengthen its defensive line and pass rush over the past couple of seasons than the Giants,” wrote PFF’s Zoltan Buday. “They drafted Kayvon Thibodeaux and Abdul Carter with top-five picks in 2022 and 2025, respectively, and also traded for former first-rounder Brian Burns.<\/p>\n
“The team’s edge defender trio is complemented by perhaps the best nose tackle in the league, Dexter Lawrence. Although Lawrence’s 2024 season was cut short due to an injury, his 89.9 PFF overall grade still ranked third among interior defenders.”<\/p>\n
Lawrence was in the midst of a career-year before an elbow injury forced him to miss the final month of the season. The 6-foot-4, 340-pound lineman registered a career-high nine sacks across his first 12 games before the injury, while also adding 16 quarterback hits, eight tackles for loss, one forced fumble and one pass defensed.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Burns picked up 8.5 sacks and 61 total pressures, according to PFF, while Thibodeaux finished with 5.5 sacks and 38 total pressures, despite missing five games with a wrist injury. Thibodeaux’s pressures were just five fewer than his 2023 total (in 17 games), while his 17 quarterback hits actually topped his previous high mark of 16.<\/p>\n
Then there’s the 6-foot-3, 252-pound rookie linebacker, who in addition to recording double-digit sacks last year, also picked up a nation-high 23.5 tackles for loss, along with two forced fumbles and four passes defensed, on his way to being named Unanimous All-American and first-team All-Big Ten.<\/p>\n
Carter was also selected as the Nagurski-Woodson Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year and the Smith-Brown Big Ten Defensive Lineman of the Year, all in his first season lining up on the edge.<\/p>\n
Here are PFF’s top 5 defensive lines going into the 2025 season:<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh Steelers
\nPhiladelphia Eagles
\nNew York Giants
\nHouston Texans
\nBuffalo Bills<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pro Football Focus ranks Giants among league’s top defensive lines Pro Football Focus recently released their ranking of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2067],"tags":[7,519,8008,347,1917,56,2321,2469,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-198528","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-giants","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-giants","10":"tag-giants-now","11":"tag-homepage","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-giants","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkgiants","16":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114834124747893195","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}