Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.sports From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: A TRUE GIANT Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 15:13:22 EST Message-ID: \SE D;SPORTS \HD A TRUE GIANT \SH NFL linebacking job Taylor-made for L.T. \BY Lisa Harris \CR SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES Everyone, even unsentimental Lawrence Taylor himself, realizes that it is unfitting for the final image of his NFL career to be one of helplessness. As a New York columnist suggested, go back a week and let the last snapshot be Taylor against the Washington Redskins. In some ways, though, the New York Giants linebacker's exit Sunday suited L.T. to a T: unpredictable, dramatic and stunning in its impact on both teams on the field. The NFL's all-time leader in sacks ruptured his right Achilles' tendon in the third quarter of the Giants' 27-7 victory over the Green Bay Packers. But Taylor's injury made the Giants' win seem almost insignificant. "I was just commenting on [Taylor's place in history] before it even happened," Packers free safety Chuck Cecil said. "How the guy might be the best [player] that ever played the game. It's just people seem to lean offensively [when naming the best player of all time]. But in my mind, as far as pure football players - what you think of when you think of a football player - I think of Lawrence Taylor. That's my No. 1 pick, no question about it. I had just said it watching him take the field before it happened." Before Taylor's scream - "Oh no, I don't believe it" - forced scared teammates to walk away; before the team doctor felt "just a hole" between his thumb and fingers where Taylor's Achilles' tendon should have been; before Taylor's eerie ride out of Giants Stadium somehow told his fans this probably is the end of his magnificent career; and before his teammates held out hope that it wouldn't be, even in the face of the diagnosis. In the immediate aftermath, while he was in the training room, Taylor told friend Billy Taylor (no relation), a former Giant, "It's over. I can't come back from this." After surgery and rehabilitation of his ruptured tendon, it will be 12 to 15 weeks before Taylor can run again. The injury is being compared to the one suffered last year by the Atlanta Hawks' Dominique Wilkins, who wanted to come back and needed nine months to do so. Taylor had vowed this would be his last season. A day later, Taylor wasn't in too much pain, and he expected to get into surgery early this morning at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan. A day later, the catastrophe of his timetable being disrupted was just hitting Taylor. He can't stop thinking about the changes in plans, especially when former Redskin and ESPN analyst Joe Theismann called him at home. Re-evaluating retirement? No, bemoaning lost tee times. "I asked him for strokes," Taylor said from his New Jersey home. "He told me if I had both my feet in casts, he wouldn't give them to me." There's not much Theismann doesn't give Taylor. "I think that Lawrence Taylor is one of those special people who brought quality and a mystique to pro football that transcends normal competition," Theismann said, classifying Taylor in that description with San Francisco's Joe Montana and former Dallas Cowboys Bob Lilly and Roger Staubach. "Playing in the NFC East, I played Lawrence twice a year, at least," said Theismann, whose career ended Nov. 18, 1985, after he broke his leg while being sacked by Taylor. "I know in [the Redskins'] preparation for Lawrence, it started in training camp. If we were playing the Giants in Week 4, it didn't matter. Our offensive game plan was structured to protect our offense from Lawrence Taylor, whether it be putting the tight end or back to help the tackle out. "Usually Lawrence played Joe Jacoby," Theismann said. "Lawrence weighed about 235, and Joe Jacoby earlier in his career was 310. Donnie Warren usually went around 250, Donnie was more lineman than tight end. So it took us almost 550 pounds of beef to block a 235-pound human being." In his first training-camp scrimmage, Taylor made four sacks and recovered a fumble. In his first preseason game, against the Chicago Bears, he sacked the quarterback twice, jumped on a fumble and had 10 solo tackles. This continued through 10 consecutive Pro Bowl seasons, two Super Bowl championships and - perhaps saddest of all - it was back these past few weeks as Taylor tried to turn around the Giants' season. Last week, he kept reminding the Giants to keep up the emotion of the prior week's Redskins game, which the Giants won 24-7. On Friday he called a team meeting, and on Sunday he told his teammates not to wait until the third quarter to get going. Those were his words, and of course, it turned out that by the end of the third quarter, he got going. Redskins center Jeff Bostic once said Taylor didn't go to New York, jump in a phone booth and become Superman. Bostic, who played at Clemson when Taylor played at lower-regarded North Carolina, said Taylor already had become Superman. And yesterday, after seeing 12 years of payoffs from the second overall pick in the 1981 draft (behind George Rogers), Giants general manager George Young thought back to a Clemson-North Carolina game. "There were much more publicized linebackers: Hugh Green and E.J. Junior," Young recalls of the '81 draft. "I went down and saw him, and I never saw a defensive player just totally dominate the game. "If he needed to force a fumble, he did that. If he needed a sack, he got one. If a pass needed to be knocked down . . . I never saw a player like that before." Or since. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM