Best NFL Players of All Time: Lawrence Taylor. Ranking the Top Players in History. Place a bet on an NFL football game now.

Best NFL Players of All Time: Lawrence Taylor

Taylor receives more credit than anyone else for turning the New York Giants around. Ever since his arrival in New York before the 1981 season, Taylor’s main focus has been causing chaos on the field. The Giants had been punching bags for the majority of the previous eighteen years, and head coach Ray Perkins was dealing with a club that had not played in the postseason since the NFL Championship Game against the Chicago Bears in 1963.

When Taylor arrived, that changed right away. The Giants began to deliver blows rather than take them. Although the Giants had Phil Simms at quarterback and a capable running game, they also had other strong offensive components, so it wasn’t all Taylor’s fault. However, opponents’ first conversation starter when game planning began for New York was the fierce Taylor.

The Giants’ 3-4 defense saw Taylor redefine the outside linebacker position. With his incredible speed, he could close the distance on any play and was most effective when pursuing the quarterback. With Taylor in the lineup, the Giants defense—which finished 1980 with the 24th-highest total yards allowed—improved to the third spot. Against New York, opponents had scored 425 points in 1980; in 1981, that figure dropped to 257.

Unofficially finishing with 9.5 sacks in his debut season, Taylor had natural advantage when he turned the corner to bring pressure to the quarterbacks. Bill Parcells, the linebacker coach for the Giants in his debut season, was his first position coach in the NFL.

When Taylor was rushing the passer or playing with intensity, Parcells never had to do anything to help him. However, he did have some influence over Taylor’s placement inside the defensive system. The same is true for Bill Belichick, who led the Giants’ defense during Taylor’s best years (after Parcells’ appointment as head coach).

With the New England Patriots, Belichick would go on to win his own series of titles as one of the NFL’s greatest head coaches. He claimed that Taylor’s body-switching recklessness is unmatched in football history. It also functioned as the standard by which he measured the degree of dedication he expected from his colleagues.

Taylor was a 10-time Pro Bowler and eight-time first-team All-Pro pick. During his career, Taylor also won the title three times. Taylor was at his best in 1986, when he won league MVP honors for the second time in his career despite being a defensive player. Despite the Giants opponents using extraordinary measures to stop him, he finished that season with 20.5 sacks and was essentially unbeatable.

Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh never ran away from Taylor because he was so afraid of his ability to track plays down from behind. Rather than going around Taylor, where one or two blockers might be able to contain Taylor long enough to give a running back a chance to get past him, the 49ers chose to run the ball straight at Taylor when they decided to go after the Giants. That was not possible with Taylor running a play down from the other side in broad daylight.

Coach Joe Gibbs of the Washington Redskins had witnessed Taylor break quarterback Joe Theismann’s leg during the 1985 season as he came around the corner to sack him in a Monday night game. The graphic sequence, which is still a YouTube mainstay some 25 years later, inspired Gibbs to create the H-back position, which was intended to slow Taylor down by keeping an extra blocker in place.

Taylor’s reputation was both tarnished and inflated throughout his career by the Theismann episode. He didn’t want to injure them as much as he wanted to get to the quarterback when he was on the eld. Taylor began gesturing for Washington’s medical personnel to come out onto the field to tend to the downed quarterback as soon as Theismann went unconscious.

Regarding his personal wounds, Taylor frequently ignored them. In 1987, he played with a hairline fracture in his tibia, and in 1989, he suffered a broken foot. After he sustained a concussion, Giants trainers had to take his helmet away from him so they could prevent him from playing again. Taylor participated in a historic 1988 season game against the New Orleans Saints in spite of torn pectoral muscles and shoulder ligaments that left him breathless and in excruciating agony all the time. Due to the incapacity to play quarterback Phil Simms, Harry Carson, and Carl Banks, he continued to be in the starting lineup. The Giants won 13–12, and Taylor recorded seven tackles, three sacks, and two caused turnovers in the contest.

Legendary coach and announcer John Madden claimed he had never seen a defensive player even remotely comparable to Taylor’s on-field intensity, whose overall effect was to alter the entire nature of the game. Madden told ESPN that Lawrence Taylor “changed defense more than anybody else.” “He altered linebackers’ style of play. His approach altered how teams pressure the passer. Both the way defenses block linebackers and linebackers play has altered as a result of him.

Ron Jaworski, a former quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, is not overly obsessed with figuring out where Taylor was on the field. Although Taylor joined the NFL the next season and seemed to live in the back row whenever the two teams played, Jaworski was one of the best quarterbacks in the game and guided the Eagles to an appearance in Super Bowl XV against the Oakland Raiders. Jaworski remarked, “I searched for him before every snap.” “It was just a matter of making ends meet.”

In spite of the fact that Taylor’s preoccupation with getting to the quarterback allowed him to record 142 career sacks (including the historic 9.5 from his rookie season), there were moments when it seemed possible that he neglected some of his other duties in order to get to the quarterback.

Even while Taylor was a fantastic player, his carelessness off the field might have prevented him from being an even more dominant one. Throughout his career, he struggled with alcohol and drug misuse because his drive to cause havoc on the eld was almost as strong as his enthusiasm for living a harsh life. With each move he made, he gained a reputation for acting irrationally, which had to have some bearing on his output.

Taylor’s drug use in 1988 resulted in four game suspensions, but he was able to avoid more suspensions the rest of his career. After retiring at the conclusion of the 1993 season, he entered two treatment facilities in 1995 to treat his cocaine use. In the end, he would learn to live without the substance, pursue a career in film, and develop a new obsession: golf. However, his domination on the field allowed him to change the Giants franchise and redefine defense play.

Best NFL Players of All Time: Lawrence Taylor Stats

Regular Season

Year	Age	Tm	Pos	No.	G	GS	Int	Yds	TD	Lng	Fmb	FR	Yds	TD	Sk	AV
1981	22	NYG	ROLB	56	16	16	1	1	0	1	1	1	4	0	9.5	18
1982	23	NYG	ROLB	56	9	8	1	97	1	97	0	0	0	0	7.5	16
1983	24	NYG	ROLB/RILB	56	16	16	2	10	0	10	1	2	3	0	9	18
1984	25	NYG	ROLB	56	16	16	1	-1	0	-1	0	0	0	0	11.5	16
1985	26	NYG	ROLB	56	16	16			0		0	2	25	0	13	23
1986	27	NYG	ROLB	56	16	16			0		0	0	0	0	20.5	17
1987	28	NYG	ROLB	56	12	11	3	16	0	15	0	0	0	0	12	13
1988	29	NYG	ROLB	56	12	12			0		0	1	0	0	15.5	14
1989	30	NYG	ROLB	56	16	15			0		0	0	0	0	15	19
1990	31	NYG	ROLB	56	16	16	1	11	1	11	0	1	0	0	10.5	18
1991	32	NYG	ROLB	56	14	14			0		0	2	0	0	7	7
1992	33	NYG	ROLB	56	9	9			0		0	1	2	0	5	4
1993	34	NYG	ROLB	56	16	15			0		0	1	0	0	6	9
Career					184	180	9	134	2	97	2	11	34	0	142	192

Playoffs

Year	Age	Tm	Pos	G	GS	Int	Yds	TD	Lng	PD	FF	Fmb	FR	Yds	TD
1981	22	NYG	ROLB	2	2			0			0	0	0	0	0
1984	25	NYG	ROLB	2	2			0			0	0	0	0	0
1985	26	NYG	ROLB	2	2			0			0	0	0	0	0
1986	27	NYG	ROLB	3	3	1	34	1	34	0	0	0	0	0	0
1989	30	NYG	ROLB	1	1			0			0
1990	31	NYG	RLB,ROLB	3	3			0			0	0	1	2	0
1993	34	NYG	ROLB	2	2			0			0	0	0	0	0
Career				15	15	1	34	1	34	0	0	0	1	2	0

 

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