Looking for Lessons
Three weeks remain in the NFL regular season. Most fantasy leagues are staging their playoff semifinals. As many fantasy gamers' roster management ends, this column reflects on the 2025 season for lessons for future application. This week's edition focuses on defensive linemen – primarily edge rushers, who are dominating interior defenders on this year's leaderboard. The second and third tiers of the defense will appear here in the next two weeks.
Reading the Defense is a weekly column that considers the effects of player deployment and schematic trends on individual defensive players' fantasy value. While analytics take hold in NFL front offices and on the sidelines, data-driven decision-making also benefits fantasy gamers.
Nearly every successful fantasy defensive lineman this season is a high draft pick or elite athlete with a relative athletic score of 9 or higher. Many qualify as both. As a predictor, draft capital is so strong in 2025 that few highly drafted veteran starters have struggled. Those who have struggled, lost time to injury, or are young and arguably still developing.
A few more, like Kwity Paye, have been acknowledged as busts. Paye must seek to continue his career as a rotational piece like Dante Fowler Jr or risk the path of Clelin Ferrell, an end-of-roster journeyman.
Disappointments
Jacksonville's Travon Walker and Dexter Lawrence II of the Giants have been arguably the biggest disappointments at their respective positions – edge defender and defensive tackle. Before getting hurt on Thanksgiving 2024, Lawrence looked poised to take Aaron Donald's mantle as the league's premier interior defender. Walker recorded 10.5 and 10.0 quarterback sacks in back-to-back seasons coming into 2025.
A dislocated elbow derailed Lawrence's 9.0-sack campaign in his 12th game last year. The prolific total was highly improbable for a 340-pound nose tackle. The injury is reportedly affecting him in 2025 and is now reducing his workload.
Walker, likewise, has been slowed by injury in 2025. A knee cost him three games. When active, he has played only 55 percent of his team's defensive snaps to manage the injury. The 392 reps he's taken in 2025 are well off his career pace. In three previous seasons, he averaged 856 defensive snaps.
Both players are frustrating assets for dynasty gamers. Lawrence is 28 and plays for a team seeking new coaches for 2026. Walker, the former first overall pick, turned 25 the day before publication of this article. In four seasons, he's been a volume-based compiler bookending a superior player, Josh Hines-Allen. Walker will play for his second contract in 2026 on the fifth-year option, his last chance to prove Jacksonville's dubious prospect evaluation correct, that he has more upside than Aidan Hutchinson.
Dexter Lawrence II has generated a 5.2% pressure rate, the lowest mark of his career. pic.twitter.com/k8qQEFHx8Y
— Big Blue Film Room (@BigBlueFilmRoom) November 29, 2025
Sleepers Awakened
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