Dexter Lawrence took a look inside his rather untidy locker on Wednesday and admitted he had yet to see any records pointing to league correspondence.
“I haven’t received my fine yet,” Lawrence told the Post. “We’ll find out when I get my sentence.”
Lawrence knows the NFL will pull some money from his next check because he slapped the passer penalty on him in the third quarter of the 23-17 win in Jacksonville. Lawrence doesn’t know if the league will land him more money for the fourth quarter by robbing the passer originally committed by teammate Leonard Williams but assigned to Lawrence during the game. The announcement in the press box showed that Lawrence committed the penalty, and the official play-by-play also states that Lawrence was the culprit.
If the league wants both of Lawrence’s penalties, he’s not going to take it easy.
“Yeah, you’d have to fight it if it wasn’t me,” Lawrence said. “I’ll probably make Leonard pay both anyway.”
Dexter Lawrence tackles Trevor Lawrence in the Giants’ 23-17 win over the Jaguars.Getty Images
Lawrence smiled as he said this, but he knows these penalties aren’t funny. In the third quarter, he was flagged for grabbing Jaguar quarterback Trevor Lawrence – the two won a national championship together in Clemson in 2018 – by the front of the jersey and dragging him to the ground.
“They didn’t like that I pulled him down,” Dexter Lawrence said, suggesting the officer may have sensed the quarterback’s knee had already touched down before he was pulled down.
There have been all sorts of murmurs and complaints about the way the league is handling these gross penalties, with videos each week showing what is considered soft contact with quarterbacks being flagged for a personal foul. In the first five weeks of the season, however, there were actually far fewer pass penalties than in previous years. There have been 29 roughing penalties against passers in five weeks this season, compared to 54 at the same time in 2021 and 41 in 2020.
Lawrence, who is having the best season of his four-year career, has already equaled his season-high four sacks, which he had in 16 games in 2020 to seven games in 2022. He will target Geno Smith in Seattle on Sunday and hope to add to his sack overall. Smith has been fired 16 times.
What Lawrence says he won’t do is fall short or be soft on the contact he makes with Smith.
“You just keep playing football, you don’t let it affect how you charge the passer or how you attack the passer because they’re going to call it or not,” Lawrence said. “I’ve had hits where I put a little bit on him and they didn’t name it. You just keep playing our game, give it a few hits.
“It’s hard to avoid. You see a lot of things in the league that are hard to avoid without breaking a tackle or screwing yourself up, so just keep playing football.”