“When I first got to college, I didn’t really have any pass rush skills that I knew about yet,” Lawrence said.”<\/p>\n
That’s obviously all changed, and in part with the assistance of Cowboys’ assistant defensive line coach Demeitre Brim, previously a defensive analyst at UCF who, throughout the pre-draft process, helped Dallas understand exactly how high the ceiling could be for Lawrence.<\/p>\n
The front office made it clear in their post-Day 1 press conference that he was their pick at 20th-overall but hoped they could pick up extra picks \u2014 which they did by way of two fourth-rounders from the Eagles to move down to No. 23 \u2014 and still have a chance to grab Lawrence; and the plan worked out masterfully.<\/p>\n
“The film, when you watch it, it’s very apparent,” said head coach Brian Schottenheimer. “His ability to bend, to turn his toe and to accelerate off of different angles [is real]. What we love about him is he doesn’t just get the quarterback. He gets the ball. And that’s a big emphasis for us this year \u2014 getting back right in the giveaway and takeaway market.”<\/p>\n
The former First-team All Big 12 edge rusher not only finished 10th on UCF’s all-time sack list with 20 through 37 games, but he also forced three fumbles over the last two seasons, to Schottenheimer’s point regarding him being a football hunter.<\/p>\n
Now joining 11th-overall pick Caleb Downs as blue chip players being looked upon to help quickly turn around the defense for incoming defensive player Christian Parker, Lawrence fully understands the assignment.<\/p>\n
“He does a lot of great things,” said Lawrence. “And I’m excited to get on the field and play with him.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“When I first got to college, I didn’t really have any pass rush skills that I knew about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,49365,88318,1090,49483,6349],"class_list":{"0":"post-265787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-headlines","10":"tag-dallas-news","11":"tag-featured-offseason-2026","12":"tag-malachi-lawrence","13":"tag-news-all-news","14":"tag-news-draft-central-2026","15":"tag-news-patrik-walker"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}