#4

 

LAWRENCE TAYLOR

More than any other individual, Taylor gets credit for turning around the New York Giants franchise. From the time he arrived in New York prior to the 1981 season, Taylor was all about committing mayhem on the field. Giants head coach Ray Perkins had a team on his hands that had not seen any postseason play since the 1963 NFL Championship Game against the Chicago Bears, and the Giants had been punching bags for much of the ensuing 18 years.

That changed immediately with the arrival of Taylor. Instead of absorbing the blows, the Giants started delivering them. It wasn’t all Taylor’s doing, as a young defense started to come of age and the Giants also had the key elements of a resilient offense with Phil Simms at quarterback and a competent running game, but it was the ferocious Taylor who was the first item up for discussion when opponents started game-planning against New York.

Taylor redefined the outside linebacker position in the Giants’ 3–4 defense. He could chase any play down from behind with his remarkable speed and was at his best when he was in pursuit of the quarterback. The Giants’ defense, which ranked 24th in total yards allowed in 1980 improved to third with Taylor in the lineup. Opponents had scored 425 points against New York in 1980; that total dipped to 257 in 1981.

Taylor, who unofficially recorded 9.5 sacks in his rookie season, had a natural leverage when coming around the corner to get the quarterbacks. His first position coach in the NFL was Bill Parcells, who served as the Giants’ linebacker coach in his rookie season. Parcells had some influence on Taylor in terms of his on-field positioning in the defensive scheme, but he never had to do a thing in terms of technique when Taylor was rushing the passer, or in terms of passion when L.T. was playing the game. The same holds for Bill Belichick, who was the Giants’ defensive coordinator during the prime of Taylor’s career (after Parcells was named head coach).

Belichick, who would later earn his own spurs as one of the top five head coaches in NFL history with the New England Patriots, said that Taylor’s recklessness with his body on the field is unparalleled in football history. It also served as the benchmark for the level of commitment he demanded from his teammates.

A 10-time Pro Bowler and eight-time first-team All-Pro selection, Taylor won the Defensive Player of the Year award three times during his career (the only player in league history to win it more than twice). Taylor was at his most dominant during the 1986 season when he became only the second defensive player in history to capture league-wide MVP honors. He had 20.5 sacks that season and was virtually unstoppable even though Giants opponents went to unprecedented lengths to stop him.

Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh was so fearful of Taylor’s ability to chase plays down from behind that he never ran away from him. Instead, when the 49ers decided to run the ball against the Giants, it was directly at Taylor where one or two blockers might be able to control Taylor long enough to give a running back just enough of a crack to get past him. That was impossible when Taylor was in full flight running a play down from the opposite side.

Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs had seen Taylor end quarterback Joe Theismann’s career during the 1985 season by breaking his leg after he came around the corner to sack him in a Monday night game. The gruesome scene lives on nearly 25 years later as a YouTube staple and pushed Gibbs to invent the H-back position, which was designed to keep an extra blocker in just to slow Taylor down.

The Theismann incident both dogged and exaggerated Taylor’s reputation throughout his career. As much as he wanted to get to the quarterback when he was on the field, he didn’t want to maim them. As soon as Theismann went down, Taylor started motioning for Washington’s medical staff to come out onto the field to attend to the fallen quarterback.

As far as his own injuries were concerned, Taylor often paid them no heed. He played with a hairline fracture in his tibia in 1987 and a broken foot in 1989. Giants trainers once had to steal his helmet to keep him from returning to the field after he suffered a concussion. In a legendary game against the New Orleans Saints in the 1988 season, Taylor played despite torn shoulder ligaments and a torn pectoral muscle that left him short of breath and in constant pain. He stayed in the lineup because teammates Harry Carson, Carl Banks, and quarterback Phil Simms were unable to play. Taylor had seven tackles, three sacks, and two forced fumbles during the game and Giants came away with a 13–12 victory.

Hall of Fame coach and broadcaster John Madden said he never saw a defensive player who could come close to matching Taylor’s on-field ferocity and whose all-around impact was to change the way the game was played. “Nobody changed defense more than Lawrence Taylor,” Madden told ESPN. “He changed the way linebackers play. He changed the way teams rush the passer. He changed the way linebackers play and he changed the way offenses block linebackers.”

Former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski’s obsession with knowing where Taylor was on the field has not been exaggerated. Jaworski was one of the top quarterbacks in the game and led the Eagles to an appearance in Super Bowl XV against the Oakland Raiders, but from the moment Taylor entered the league the next season he appeared to live in Philadelphia’s backfield whenever the two teams played. “I looked for him before every snap,” Jaworski said. “It was a matter of trying to survive.”

Taylor’s obsession with getting to the passer allowed him to register 142 sacks for his career (including the unofficial 9.5 from his rookie season) and there were times that he might have missed some of his other responsibilities because of his desire to get to the quarterback. As great as Taylor was, his off-the-field recklessness may have kept him from being an even more dominant player. He was troubled by alcohol and drug abuse throughout his career as his passion for hard living was nearly as great as his desire to wreak havoc on the field. He developed a reputation for maniacal behavior with every step he took and that had to have some impact of his on-field production.

Taylor was suspended four games for his drug use in 1988 but managed to avoid another suspension throughout the rest of his career. He retired at the end of the 1993 season and then went into rehab twice for cocaine use in 1995. He would ultimately learn to live his life without the substance and have a career in film and another obsession—golf. But his dominance on the field turned the Giants franchise around and allowed him to reinvent the way defense is played.