Dexter Lawrence Had Half a Sack in 2025. The Bengals Are Betting That Doesn’t Tell the Full Story.

The Cincinnati Bengals spent this offseason like a team that knows its window is wide open but also feels it starting to creak. They loaded up around Joe Burrow, sure, but the real shopping spree happened on defense. New faces everywhere. And at the center of it all, literally, is Dexter Lawrence.

Lawrence had nine sacks in 2024. Then he had half a sack in 2025. That kind of drop-off looks terrible on paper. But the Bengals aren’t panicking. Neither is Lawrence, who sounds more annoyed than worried.

“I’m more managing it now, because you can’t really beat up on other teams,” Lawrence said on June 19, via Joe Reedy of the Associated Press. “So during the season you just let it go and you flow. I know how I approach this game and my impact to the game, even when it doesn’t show up on the sack numbers.”

That’s the key sentence. Lawrence knows his job isn’t always about the box score. He’s a nose tackle. He eats double teams. He occupies space so other people can make plays. And last year, Cincinnati’s defense was so bad overall — 31st in yards allowed, 30th in points — that Lawrence’s individual dip got magnified.

The Mafe Factor

One of the Bengals’ bigger moves was adding edge rusher Boye Mafe. The hope is that Mafe’s speed off the edge forces offenses to account for him, which in theory frees Lawrence from constant double teams. That could mean more one-on-one opportunities for Lawrence in the middle. It could also just mean he gets to do his dirty work with slightly less resistance.

Mafe already sounds like a believer. “We know the caliber of player he is,” Mafe said. “Having him on our side, it makes it so much easier. It makes everyone’s job around us easier. He’s a calming presence because we have him on our side.”

That’s a teammate talking, so take it with a grain of salt. But it also matches what the tape shows from Lawrence’s 2024 season. He was a wrecking ball. The 2025 tape shows a guy who got held, chipped, and schemed against constantly. The half-sack number was ugly, but the disruption was still there sometimes.

The Bigger Picture for Cincinnati

The Bengals don’t need Lawrence to be a 10-sack guy. They need him to be a problem. They need the defensive line to make life hard on opposing quarterbacks, and they need the secondary to hold up longer than three seconds. If that happens, Cincinnati’s offense can do the rest.

But if the defense doesn’t improve — and 380 yards per game is a basement-level number — then all those offseason additions won’t matter much. Lawrence is the anchor. He’s the guy who sets the tone, whether the sack column shows it or not.