Nose Tackle · Cincinnati Bengals

Dexter Lawrence

No. 97 · 8th season

The Bengals offense is noticing something different about practice this year

Training camp is supposed to be comfortable for the offense. Same guys, familiar schemes, a chance to get into rhythm before anyone is keeping score. That is not what the Bengals offense is getting right now.

Dexter Lawrence came to Cincinnati in a trade this offseason as the headline piece of a defense that needed a new identity. Lawrence is a defensive tackle who takes up space the way a piece of furniture does — you just have to work around him, and working around him is hard. He had been one of the more disruptive interior linemen in the league during his time in New York.

He arrived, and the Bengals defense got noticeably less comfortable to practice against. Offensive players have been saying out loud that this camp feels different from last year — more physical, more contested, harder to find the easy looks. That kind of feedback from your own teammates is not nothing.

For the Bengals, this is what an offseason investment is supposed to feel like when it is working. Lawrence has not played a regular season snap in Cincinnati yet. But the offense already knows he is there.

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