Greatest NFL defensive player of all time? Every conversation has to start and (probably) end with New York Giants legend Lawrence Taylor.
A quick Lawrence Taylor history lesson
- 2x Super Bowl Champion
- NFL MVP 1986
- 3x Defensive Player of the Year (including as a rookie in 1981)
- 8x First-Team All-Pro
- 10x Pro Bowler
- NFL sacks leader
- 1980s All-Decade Team
- NFL 75th and 100th Anniversary Teams
- Giants Ring of Honor
- No. 56 retired
- First-Ballot Hall of Famer
The Giants drafted Lawrence Taylor with the No. 2 pick in the 1981 NFL Draft. They finished the season 4-12 and had not made the playoffs since 1963 at the time of his selection.
The arrival of LT to East Rutherford, New Jersey, changed EVERYTHING!
Lawrence Taylor on lessons learned from rookie season
“When I first came to the Giants, they were used to losing,” Lawrence Taylor explained via Zoom. “They had not won anything in 15 years… one thing I brought was enthusiasm. Someone makes a big play, you show him he made a big play.”
In Taylor’s first year with Big Blue, they went 9-7, clinching a Wild Card berth and defeating the divisional rival Philadelphia Eagles, 27-21, before ultimately falling 38-24 to the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Divisional Round.
LT described one of the biggest differences from before he arrived to the Giants: winning close football games. This is something they failed to do before No. 56 came to town.
In his rookie year, they won three one-score games: 27-24 vs. the Atlanta Falcons in Week 8, 10-7 vs the Los Angeles Rams in Week 14, and 13-10 vs the Cowboys in Week 17.
It was the start of a championship mentality for Big Blue.
“We learned how to win. Instead of learning how to lose. We learned how to win the close games. The 10-13 game or the 21-19 game. We learned how to win those games. That was big.”
Taylor was the first of three sons born to parents Clarence and Iris Taylor. His father worked as a dispatcher at the Newport News shipyards, while his mother was a schoolteacher.
He remembers something that his father told him that sticks with him all these years later, about life and football.
“You have to be better than the next man just to be equal,” Lawrence Taylor explained. “And I took that to heart. And when I went out on the football field, I really felt I was the best player on the field.”
Taylor certainly has the resume to back it up. He’s highly regarded as the greatest defensive player to ever play the game.
The Giants missed the postseason in Taylor’s second and third year, but that was only a short bump in the road for what was to come next for them.
Big Blue would make the playoffs in 1984 and ‘85 as a Wild Card team, winning a playoff game each year before falling once again in the Divisional Round (San Francisco 49ers in ‘84 and Chicago Bears in ‘85).
The Giants' magical 1986 season
And then in 1986, it all came together. After losing in the season opener on the road versus the Cowboys, 31-28, the Giants rattled off five straight wins to head into a battle at the Kingdome versus the Seattle Seahawks.
The Giants went into the locker room up 9-7, but they were held to just three points in the second half and suffered a 17-12 loss.
From that point on, the Giants NEVER lost another game for the rest of the season. They finished the year on a nine-game winning streak, ending with a 14-2 record to win the NFC East and claim the No. 1 seed in the conference.
In Week 11 vs. the Minnesota Vikings, the same night the New York Mets won Game 7 of the 1986 World Series, with 1:12 remaining in the fourth quarter down 20-19, quarterback Phil Simms found Bobby Johnson for a 22-yard completion on the right sideline on 4th-and-17 from the Vikings' 32-yard line.
The Giants went on to kick the game-winning field goal to seal a 22-20 victory over Minnesota.
“From that game on [versus Seattle], no team played with us. It was like a man playing against boys. We were running everybody out of the stadium, it wasn’t even close.”
After a first-round bye, the Giants took on Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, and the San Francisco 49ers.
The Giants' defense, led by Taylor, who had a 34-yard pick-6, held the Niners to 29 yards rushing and 184 yards in total offense. They were also held to just 2-for-14 on third down.
Big Blue didn’t commit a turnover and totaled 216 rushing yards.
Jim Burt knocked 49ers quarterback Joe Montana out of the game in the second quarter, hitting him as he threw a pass which Taylor then intercepted and returned 34 yards for a touchdown.
In the NFC Championship Game, the Giants shut out the Redskins 17-0, beating them for the third time in a single season (two divisional games and playoffs)
After the game, legendary sports broadcaster and analyst John Madden said: “Last year, I thought the Bears had the best defense I had ever seen. But in the last two weeks, I feel these Giants have as good a defense as has ever played in this league.”
The Giants sealed the magical season with a 39-20 victory in Super Bowl XXI versus John Elway and the Denver Broncos.
Lawrence Taylor vs. Tom Brady
Tom Brady, you may have heard of him?
The seven-time Super Bowl champion is highly regarded as the NFL’s GOAT. In 2007, Brady and the Patriots, including star wideout Randy Moss, wrecked havoc on the league.
Brady set the then-record for passing touchdowns in a season with 50. Moss set the receiving touchdown record with a mind-blowing 23, which still stands to this day.
I posed the question to Taylor: the Giants' dominant ‘86 defense led by LT versus Brady’s 18-1 Patriots offense?
“You gotta give the man credit, he is the GOAT, I can't argue with that,” Lawrence Taylor even admitted. “But at some point and times, you gotta hit the quarterback, you gotta HIT him!”
In 1986, Taylor was NFL MVP, the first defensive player to do so since Alan Page in 1971, and Defensive Player of the Year. Taylor also recorded a career high with 20.5 sacks as well as 105 total tackles and two forced fumbles.
“We specialize in hitting people, we don't worry about all that running and all that stuff,” Taylor explained. “We hit stuff, that's the big difference in the game back in the day, when you could hit a person, a wide receiver coming across the middle, that’s no fly zone. You’re gonna get your ass hurt coming across the middle!”
Giants upset Bills in epic Super Bowl
To win their second Super Bowl title in five years, the Giants knocked off the Buffalo Bills 20-19 in Super Bowl XXV after Bills kicker Scott Norwood’s infamous missed game-winning field goal went wide right with four seconds left.
The 1990 Bills were 13-3 in the regular season and beat the Oakland Raiders 51-3 in the AFC Championship Game. It was the team’s first Super Bowl appearance in franchise history.
Buffalo was also 8-0 at home for just the second time in franchise history.
The Bills’ 428 points (26.75 points per game) were first in the league, and they were sixth in the league in points allowed (263). Their point differential was 165 points (10.3 per game), which was the best in the NFL in 1990, as well as the best point differential in franchise history.
Buffalo's 48 offensive touchdowns (28 passing, 20 rushing) also led the league.
Fast forward to 2007, Taylor was very happy to see the Giants win Super Bowl XLII versus the New England Patriots as underdogs. I posed the question: better all-time Giants moment, Scott Norwood’s wide right field goal vs. the Giants in Super Bowl XXV or David Tyree’s helmet catch in Super Bowl XLII?
“We didn’t have the best team in the NFL, Buffalo Bills if they played us 10 times, they’d probably win six or seven.”
Overall, it was an improbable run. To get to the Super Bowl, the Giants faced off against the 49ers at Candlestick Park.
“We go to San Francisco, sit there on the field, San Fran all they're talking about is going to Tampa, we’re just a formality of playing us, we win the game, now we are going to Tampa!”
In the third quarter, Montana found John Taylor for a 61-yard touchdown to take a 13-6 lead. The Giants rallied off three unanswered field goals from Matt Bahr, including a 42-yarder as time expired to seal the 15-13 win and a trip to the Super Bowl.
“We don’t have no clothes, we ain’t dressed, we went straight to Tampa, we had to ship our clothes there because we had to go, the National Anthem Whitney Houston, she set the bar so high we couldn't lose.That’s my girl, we can’t lose. Not in front of her!”
Lawrence Taylor's defensive GOATs
According to Lawrence Taylor, the debate for the greatest defensive player of all time is a short list. Very short list.
“I am one of them, there's a couple, I’m one of those three, Deacon Jones, Reggie White and I look at myself, and then I stop looking…. I stop looking.”
Jones was a two-time Defensive Player of the Year, five-time First-Team All-Pro, eight-time Pro Bowler, and five-time sacks leader over a 14-year career with the Los Angeles Rams, San Diego Chargers, and Washington Redskins.
Reggie White’s stats are also hilarious: The two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year, Super Bowl XXXI champion, 13-time Pro Bowler, and 13-time All-Pro selection holds second place all-time among NFL career sack leaders with 198 (behind Bruce Smith's 200 career sacks)
A Giants legend
Taylor still has a strong relationship with many of his teammates during his time with the Giants. He played his entire 13-year career in the NFL with Big Blue.
“I look at the players I played with, we are still close, Harry Carson, [Phil] Simms, ]Mark] Bavarro, Pepper Johnson, all the guys, we come into town, we all get together.”
He is one of 50 current players in the Giants Ring of Honor. Taylor’s No. 56 was retired by the organization in 1994.
“I played all my football in Giants Stadium, all my football, happy about that…that’s what you talk about when you say Giant for Life, because you ain’t going nowhere, don’t wanna go nowhere else!”
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