Lawrence Taylor

1959-

American football player

Lawrence Taylor lived on the edge. Quite possibly one of the best linebackers to play the game, Taylor starred for the New York Giants and set a new standard for how linebackers played the game. He brought about a new statistic (the sack), and was a dominant player whose personal life was plagued with substance abuse problems. His induction into the Hall of Fame, in 1999, was marked by controversy due to his problems with drugs.

Growing Up

Lawrence Taylor was born on February 4, 1959, in Williamsburg, Virginia. He grew up in a four-room

frame house on the outskirts of the restored colonial village. Hailing from a middle-class environment, Taylor was the middle brother of three, and his parents have remembered his early years as active ones. Taylor was physical even as a small child. "He liked to hit," his father Clarence told New York Times Magazine. His mother made Taylor spend hours working at chores around the house to keep him occupied, sweeping the floors, carrying in groceries.

At age nine, Taylor wrote down that he wanted to be famous and to be a millionaire before he reached 30. But he'd have to do it in some other way, because he was not a very diligent student, and although bright, he never turned on to what was offered him in the public education system.

Taylor wanted to play little league football, but his mother was worried about the dangers of the sport, so she signed him up for little league baseball, where he was an all-star for four summers in the position of catcher. As a catcher, just as he later did as a linebacker, he was able to survey all that was happening on the field. (In his later life he would say he loved the position of linebacker because "you control the game from there," much like the catcher does in baseball by calling the pitches and reading the field.)

Lawrence's high school coach, Mel Jones, had to do little to convince Taylor that football, not baseball, would be a great opportunity for him. He said that football was how he could earn a college scholarship, telling him that, "If you were black and from the rural South, you thought about football the way other kids thought about careers in law or medicine."

LT (as he came to be known later on with the New York Giants) continued to grow, and the summer between his junior and senior years in high school he grew five inches and added 30 pounds. That senior year of high school was as if a switch had turned on. "He was out to do something," Paul Raynes told the New York Times Magazine. "It was like he was saying 'I'm going to be great.'"

Limited College Opportunities

His late entry into football was one of the reasons he was largely skipped over by college recruiters. Only two recruiters spoke to him about college ball. The University of North Carolina offered him a scholarship, in spite of his poor grades, and Taylor wouldn't turn it down.

Chronology

He entered college with the belief that he needed to raise hell, skip classes and get into trouble in order to survive. "I was trying to be a hoodlum," Taylor told the New York Times in 1984. He felt that by instilling fear into people, he could gain their respect. And for LT, that's what it was all about. But his social life followed him onto the field, and his first few years with UNC football were rather undisciplined. His inability to focus had him bouncing from noseguard to inside linebacker to outside linebacker.

The coaches finally saw where to put him and gave him a green light to make the inside linebacker position his own. They told LT to rely on his instincts, and he ended up with eighty solo tackles his junior year, forcing seven fumbles. Teams were scared, and the only team that season who tried to confront the menace that was Lawrence Taylor was Oklahoma, which used three men to block him.

As his college career wound down, he met and fell in love with Linda Cooley, a soft-spoken woman who admonished him for his constant belligerence. Taylor's close friends told him he would have to change his ways or risk losing the girl. And he did, proposing to Linda and then marrying her in 1982.

The Next Level

The New York Giants drafted Taylor as the second pick overall in the 1981 draft. He signed a six-year, $1.35 million contract with a $250,000 signing bonus. Taylor's entire time on the NFL field might itself be one long highlight. From the very first season, Taylor was more than impressive. He was voted All-Pro that first year, and he started in the Pro Bowl. In a 1981 article in the Boston Globe, Taylor's teammate and cornerback Terry Jackson said, "Lawrence is probably the greatest athlete I've ever been associated with."

He became the standard against which all other linebackers were compared. His intimidation of and subsequent racking up of quarterback sacks prompted the league to institute the "number of sacks" statistic, which prior to Taylor's entrance into the league had not been kept.

Searching for Greener Pastures

Upset with the overall performance of the Giants in the 1982 and 1983 seasons, Taylor shopped around for better deals with other teams. Though his contract with the Giants ran through 1987, and the team wouldn't trade him, he signed a deal with the New Jersey Generals, a USFL team, that would begin in 1988.

But the Giants counter-offered, and Taylor stayed with the team. In 1986, they would win their first ever Super Bowl, with Taylor playing an integral part. It would be the best season of his career, with 20.5 sacks and the winning of the coveted NFL's Most Valuable Player (MVP) award—only the second defensive player to ever win the award.

Sam Huff, who prior to LT's entrance into the league, was considered the ultimate linebacker, has said of Taylor, in a 1987 Philadelphia Daily News article: "He's fantastic. I've never seen anyone play the position better. He's so relentless…You've got to be a hell of a player to psyche out guys at this level, but Taylor can do it. When he wants to play, he's like some monster come down off a movie screen. He just tosses people around."

Off the Gridiron

Though he was a phenomenal success on the field, off the field Taylor's troubles would escalate. LT became well known in the New York media for complaining about the city and its pressures. This was not the relationship he wanted with the press when, with the success, money, and pressures of life in the NFL taking its toll, Taylor would sink into substance abuse.

He handled the pressures of success by turning to his old college habits—and then some. Drinking heavily ("Lawrence could put away a case in a night," friend Joseph Cale told the Washington Post ), staying out late, and lacking discipline, his performance on the field, though still outstanding, looked, in the mid-eighties, to be slipping. Then word got out that Taylor was abusing cocaine.

Awards and Accomplishments

Where Is He Now?

Inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1999, Taylor continues to work at getting his life back on track, and, like most who have battled substance abuse problems, every day is a struggle. He has had parts recently in movies such as The Waterboy (1997), Shaft (2000), and Any Given Sunday, a 1999 film he had a larger part in. The movie starred Jamie Foxx and Al Pacino, and was, as Roger Ebert put it, "A smart sports movie swamped by production overkill." Oliver Stone directed the film, and Taylor has a strong supporting role. Taylor has also done voices for video games, one of the most recent is "Grand Theft Auto."

Looking for Help

In the spring of 1986, Taylor checked himself into a rehabilitation program for substance abuse. The statement he issued at the time said: "In the past year, due to substance abuse, I have left the road I had hoped to follow both as a player and a public figure." When he emerged from treatment, he went on to have the best season of his career with the Giants, leading them to a Super Bowl victory. But Taylor would lead an on-again, off-again relationship with substance abuse.

Lawrence Taylor's off-the-field problems stirred up controversy when he was nominated for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1999. The Washington Post that year reported that some of the thirty-six media members who voted for the Hall of Fame were prepared "to bypass Taylor because of his legal troubles that include drug-related arrests and income tax problems." Taylor didn't help the situation by refusing to apologize about his past. But the guidelines for entrance into the Hall asked voters to consider only on-the-field accomplishments. Taylor was voted in.

Lawrence Taylor gained his reputation by doing things outside the lines. Though quite possibly one of the best linebackers to play the game, he's often referred to in the context of "drug abuse" or "breaking Joe Theisman's leg" (which happened in a now-famous Monday Night Football game). But Taylor is so much more than that. He starred for the New York Giants, setting new standards for how linebackers operated on the field. Taylor brought about the sack statistic, and he dominated the playing field. His personal life was plagued with substance abuse problems, yet because of his behavior off the field, his induction into the Hall of Fame and his reputation is one marked by controversy.

Career Statistics

SELECTED WRITINGS BY TAYLOR:

(With David Falkner) LT: Living on the Edge, Times Books, 1987.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

Goodman, Michael E. Lawrence Taylor (Sports Close Ups 2). New York: Crestwood House, 1988.

"Lawrence Taylor." Great Athletes, vol. 7. Hackensack, N.J.: Salem Press, Inc., 2718-2720.

Liss, Howard. The Lawrence Taylor Story. Enslow Publishers, Inc., 1987.

Taylor, Lawrence, with David Falkner. LT: Living on the Edge. New York: Times Books, 1987.

Periodicals

Adande, J.A. "NFL Should Honor Taylor with Blitz of Attention Instead of Seemingly Low-Key Approach to Hall of Fame Induction." Los Angeles Times (August 7, 1999): 2.

Boston Globe (December 13, 1981).

Boston Globe (October 14, 1984).

Boston Globe (January 21, 1987).

Bradley, J.E. "LT and the Home Team." Esquire (December 1985): 306.

Contemporary Newsmakers 1987, Issue Cumulation. Detroit: Gale, 1988.

Delcos, John. "LT is winning the Battle With Time." Football Digest (April 1991): 44.

Ellenport, Craig. "The defense rests." Sport (January 1993): 48.

Huff, Melissa. "Football legend discusses addiction." Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service (August 23, 1996).

Lieber, Jill. "Blitzed by himself. (Lawrence Taylor admits substance-abuse problem)." Sports Illustrated (September 19, 1988): 53.

Lieber, Jill. "Invincible? No, Just Real Mean." Sports Illustrated (January 26, 1987): 36.

Los Angeles Times (September 7, 1986).

Los Angeles Times (January 23, 1987).

Maske, Mark. "Taylor is Elected to Hall of Fame." Washington Post (January 31, 1999): D01.

Myers, Gary. "Phil Simms, Lawrence Taylor leave a gaping hole in Giants' heart." Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service (July 13, 1994).

New York Times (August 2, 1985).

New York Times (March 21, 1986).

New York Times (January 4, 1987).

New York Times (March 25, 1987).

Philadelphia Daily News (October 9, 1986).

Philadelphia Daily News (January 16, 1987).

Philadelphia Daily News (January 21, 1987).

Shapiro, Milton. "Search and Destroy." New York Times Magazine (August 26, 1984): 18.

Simers, T.J. "Shame on 'Fame If Taylor Is Voted In." Los Angeles Times (January 26, 1999): 2.

Sports Illustrated (April 1, 1985).

Springer, Steve. "Tagliabue Gives His Vote to Taylor for Hall of Fame." Los Angeles Times (January 30, 1999): 6.

Stanton, Barry. "Interview: Lawrence Taylor." Sport (November 1985): 17.

Washington Post (April 6, 1986).

Washington Post (January 8, 1987).

Washington Post (January 14, 1987).

Washington Post (January 21, 1987).

Washington Post (February 27, 1987).

Washington Post (March 23, 1987).

Zimmerman, Paul. "Don't Cross This Line." Sports Illustrated (September 5, 1994): 50.

Zimmerman, Paul. "Terrific Tayloring." Sports Illustrated (September 17, 1990): 30-37.

Other

"Lawrence Taylor Pro Football Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony." http://www.bbwc.com/History/taylor-hof.html/ (November 10, 2002).

Sketch by Eric Lagergren