Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor against Washington on Dec. 17, 1983. Credit: AP/Al Messerschmidt Archive
Forty years ago this week, the Giants made the most impactful draft pick in their history.
Also 40 years ago this week, that player asked them not to.
It’s just one of the ways the union between the Giants and Lawrence Taylor — an often rocky marriage that turned around a foundering franchise, produced a pair of Super Bowl titles and gave the organization its greatest player — was nearly scuttled before it came together. Looking back from four decades later, the most impressive aspect of the Giants’ use of the second overall pick in the 1981 draft is not that they had the foresight to pick Taylor but that they overcame all of the obstacles, running over and around them much the way Taylor would against potential blockers for the next 13 seasons, to select a player who would bring them so much success yet also so much heartbreak.