NFL's Greatest of All Time: Lawrence Taylor

Basic Information:

Team: New York Giants

Position: Linebacker

Height: 6'3

Weight: 240

Age: 22-34

Years: 1981-1993

Accolades:

Hall of Fame, 10x Pro Bowl, 8x First-Team All-Pro, 2x Second-Team All-Pro, 1x MVP, 2x Super Bowl Champion, 3x Defensive Player of the Year, Defensive Rookie of the Year

Career Stats:

Tackles: 1,089

Sacks: 142

Forced Fumbles: 56

Interceptions: 9

Approximate Value: 192

Breakdown:

Lawrence Taylor was an outside linebacker for the New York Giants and one of the best pass rushers in football history. He would be a tad undersized in today's NFL, but his athleticism, strength, and versatility allowed him to shine in the 1980s.

Taylor was a freak athlete who paired excellent speed and quickness with overwhelming upper body strength. This combination made him extremely dangerous as a pass rusher and almost unstoppable in one-on-one situations. Offensive lineman needed outlier athletic traits just to keep up with him off the line of scrimmage.

According to the trustworthy website Google, which should never be questioned, he ran a 4.53 forty-yard dash. That's crazy for an edge rusher. Unfortunately, the NFL combine began in 1982, a year after his rookie season, so this number isn't official. Nevertheless, we don't need combine numbers to tell us he's athletic. It's just a well-known fact.

Here's a play from his MVP season in 1986, which highlights his unreal explosiveness.

Once Taylor pushes the offensive tackle to the ground, he explodes en route to the quarterback. He ends up forcing a strip-sack fumble which his teammate returns for a touchdown.

His speed was possibly his best skill as an edge rusher, but his upper body strength was also outstanding. His ability to shove offensive tackles and put them on the ground was incredible, and he did it consistently.

Taylor's upper body strength was so good that he could put offensive linemen on their backs using only one hand. Do you know what else is impressive? The play above was from his second season when he was just 23 years old. Even as an inexperienced youngster, he was a physical specimen.

One of Taylor's more underrated qualities is his coverage ability. He was primarily a pass rusher in the Giant's 3-4 defense, but his speed and mobility allowed him to drop into coverage if necessary.

Throughout his entire career, Taylor caught nine total interceptions. Kevin Greene and Derrick Thomas, two of the greatest pass-rushing linebackers of all time, caught just six interceptions combined in their careers. There isn't much data available from the 1980s, but Taylor's interception totals show that he was at least a very solid ballhawk relative to other all-time great pass rushers.

Taylor was excellent early in his career, racking up 26 sacks (0.63 per game) and four interceptions through his first three seasons. During this time, he had an approximate value of 52, and he was a three-time all-pro.

Approximate value is a metric that, according to pro-football-reference, attempts to put a single number on the seasonal value of a player at any position from any year. It does a good job of measuring how valuable a player's career was, and it's useful for comparing different players' careers in terms of value. It isn't perfect, relying to much on games started, but it is a solid metric nevertheless. For the rest of this project, I'll refer to it as AV.

Although Taylor was really good early in his career, I believe his three-year regular-season peak began in 1985 and lasted until 1987. During these three seasons, he put up 45.5 sacks, three interceptions, and 53 AV. You could also argue his peak went from 1986-1988. During these three years, he generated 48 sacks, three interceptions, and 44 AV. From 1985-1988, he was a three-time all-pro, missing out just once in 1987.

Taylor's best single-season performance came in 1986, a year in which he racked up 20.5 sacks and generated 17 AV. He also won the MVP award, becoming the second defensive player since Allen Page to do so. He was simply on another level this season.

It's hard to tell how good Taylor was in the playoffs because the available data is limited, but he had some productive postseason runs. From 1981-1985 (3 postseasons), Taylor racked up six total sacks (one per game), and in 1989, he played just one game but put up two sacks.

One thing that concerns me is that Taylor wasn't very productive in 1986 and 1990 when the Giants won two Super Bowls. During these playoff runs, he played six games and accumulated just half a sack in total. It would be interesting to see how many pressures he had, but this stat wasn't tracked back then.

Another concern I have is that the Giants' defense was potentially better without Taylor on the field. From 1985-1987, the Giants allowed 22.75 points per 65 plays in games that Taylor played. He missed three games during this stretch, but the Giants didn't miss a beat without him. The Giants' defense was more efficient in these three games, allowing just 14.95 points per 65 plays. This means the Giants' defense was around 8 points better when Taylor didn't play. I will admit, this is a small sample size, so we should look at some more data.

From 1986-1988, the Giants allowed 21.45 points per 65 plays when Taylor played. In the seven games he missed during this time, they allowed just 18.2 points per 65 plays. I'm not saying that the Giants were better defensively without Taylor, but these numbers are fascinating. Maybe the Giants were missing other players during this time, or perhaps they were playing easier opponents. Nevertheless, I think it's a bit concerning that the Giants were statistically better when Taylor wasn't on the field.

Lawrence Taylor was an absolute stud who changed the game due to his speed and power. His playstyle changed the way opponents ran their offense and forced them to block him with a tight end rather than a running back. He also changed the outside linebacker position, turning it into an aggressive position rather than an instinctual one.

His athleticism made him a nightmare on the gridiron and helped him have arguably the greatest peak of any defensive lineman in NFL history. I don't love bringing up accolades when comparing all-time greats, but Taylor was an all-pro in eight of his first nine seasons, and he won the MVP award as an outside linebacker. Both of these accomplishments are insane.

Taylor's physical tools and his peak and impact on the game make him one of the greatest defensive players in NFL history.