The Cincinnati Bengals don’t have a first-round pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, and they haven’t had one since just about Sunday. Cincinnati shipped the No. 10 overall pick to the New York Giants on April 19 in exchange for three-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence II.
This is the first time in franchise history the Bengals will enter a draft without a first-round selection.
The Dexter Lawrence Trade That Cost the Bengals Their 2026 First-Rounder
Lawrence requested a trade out of New York earlier in April after his contract talks with the Giants stalled. The Bengals wasted little time jumping at the opportunity. They sent the No. 10 pick to the Giants and immediately signed Lawrence to a one-year contract extension worth $28 million in new money, with guarantees that run through the 2028 season.
At 28 years old, Lawrence is a three-time Pro Bowler (2022-24) and a two-time Associated Press Second-Team All-Pro (2022-23).
Head coach Zac Taylor was watching his son play AAU basketball in Chicago Saturday afternoon when the trade was being finalized. Director of player personnel Duke Tobin called the decision a product of ownership buy-in from Mike Brown and the Blackburn family. “The opportunity to add a player of Dexter’s ability was too good to pass up,” Tobin said in the Bengals’ official release. “Dexter fits the vision we have on our defense and will also elevate others around him.”
The Bengals now have seven picks in the draft. Their first selection comes at No. 41 overall in the second round. Before Lawrence, Cincinnati had already signed defensive tackle Jonathan Allen, pass rusher Boye Mafe, and safety Bryan Cook in free agency, while promoting Al Golden to defensive coordinator after firing Lou Anarumo.
Lawrence will now be the centerpiece.
Why the Bengals Had To Make This Trade
Cincinnati finished 6-11 in 2025, the franchise’s worst season since 2020 and a third straight year missing the playoffs. Joe Burrow suffered a Grade 3 turf toe tear in Week 2 against Jacksonville on Sept. 14, required surgery, and didn’t return until Thanksgiving night. Jake Browning lost all three of his starts before the Bengals traded for Joe Flacco, and Cincinnati sat at 3-8 by the time Burrow was cleared to return.
The defense finished 32nd in most statistical categories. At one stretch it allowed at least 27 points and 350-plus yards in eight consecutive games, the longest such single-season streak in NFL history. The Bengals eventually extended the 27-plus points streak to 10 games, breaking the all-time NFL record previously held by the 2020 Chargers.
The more telling number is older. Cincinnati has drafted 62 defensive players from 2011 through 2025, and none of them has made a Pro Bowl. Geno Atkins, the franchise’s last Pro Bowl defender drafted by Cincinnati, came in the 2010 draft, one year outside the window. That’s the backstory behind the decision to deal the No. 10 pick.
The Bengals have spent 15 years trying to draft and develop defensive stars and haven’t produced one. Lawrence arrives with three Pro Bowls and two All-Pro nods already on the ledger.
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The urgency is about Burrow. He turned 29 in December and is locked into a contract that runs through 2029. Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins both signed long-term extensions last offseason. Cincinnati committed nearly 40 percent of its cap to the Burrow-Chase-Higgins nucleus heading into 2025, the highest share in the league at the time. That math works only if the team wins now, and it has not been winning.
The reporting after the trade also indicated the Bengals explored flipping the No. 10 pick to Las Vegas for pass rusher Maxx Crosby, but balked at the two-first-round-pick asking price. Lawrence cost one.
The risk is real. Lawrence is coming off a career-low 2025 with 0.5 sacks and 33 tackles, the Bengals are mortgaging a top-10 draft slot for a 28-year-old interior defender, and they still have to evaluate Golden’s scheme change on top of it.
But after 14 years of drafting defenders who never reached an All-Star game, trading the pick for a player who already has three of them is a philosophy change more than a reach. The question isn’t whether Lawrence was worth the No. 10 pick. It’s whether one veteran can fix a defensive draft record this barren.
