Giants' Abdul Carter already giving off Lawrence Taylor vibes at camp
Giants linebacker Abdul Carter speaks to the media after a joint practice with the Jets on Wednesday in East Rutherford, N.J. Credit: Ed Murray
It didn’t take long for Lawrence Taylor to make a dent in the NFL when he arrived in 1981. He didn’t just win Defensive Rookie of the Year that season, he won Defensive Player of the Year, too. That hadn’t happened before and it hasn’t happened since.
But while Taylor’s impact was immediate, it took a little time for his Giants teammates to get used to playing with him. Hall of Fame middle linebacker Harry Carson, who already was a decorated six-year veteran when Taylor showed up, often said Taylor was so instinctual on the field, so open to improvisation, that he had to change the way he approached his own responsibilities to accommodate for the unpredictability beside him.
If Taylor zagged, it might leave open a vulnerability in which he was supposed to zig, and Carson or someone else would have to cover for that gap.
“It was like watching a show,” Carson said. “He would do things that we’d never seen before, and it was all impromptu. He would just think of stuff as he was going through the movements. He was like a freestyle ballerina masquerading as a football player.”
Carson likened it to a jazz ensemble. Miles Davis could go off on wild riffs, but if everyone in the band did that, it would be chaos. The drummers and bass players needed to hold the beat in order to free up Davis to be untethered to the structure and reach his full genius.
This summer the Giants have added Abdul Carter to their defense. The comparisons to 1981 are too enticing to ignore.
Carter already has shown that adjusting to the NFL game will not be a challenge for him. He’s been dominating offensive linemen for the Giants, the Bills and the Jets, lining up all over the field and attacking at various angles.
In many ways, then, this preseason hasn’t been about bringing Carter up to speed on playing with the Giants, as it often is for rookies. It’s almost been about getting the Giants used to playing with Carter. And as the veterans around him start to get a feel for his unicorn instincts and how he sees the game, they’re learning to become the beat-keepers for Carter’s ad-libbing.
This may be Rebirth of the Cool.
“There’s a time and place to be instinctive when you think you can go make a play,” defensive coordinator Shane Bowen said. “If you take that risk, you better make it. But I think the other guys behind him understand who he is. Understanding who you’re playing with, I think, is a big part of that.”
“We have to make sure that he is able to display all of his talents while being maximized,” fellow linebacker Kayvon Thibodeaux said. “Sometimes when you have a talented All-World player, it’s tough to limit their ability because you have to do what the scheme says and all 11 guys have to work together. So it’s finding that fine-tuned balance between being great and also still doing what the 11 need to do.”
A lot of reading Carter as a teammate will fall to inside linebacker Bobby Okereke, from whom all communication stems. He said he understands what Carson said about playing with Taylor and is having to tweak his own game to play with Carter.
“What he is best at is running fast and free,” Okereke said. “He is like a young buck, a young horse. He doesn’t necessarily know what is going on, but he’s going to run into it at a million miles an hour. So for me it’s fun because I get to make him right. It almost makes it a clearer picture for me because I can trust that he is going to go fast and penetrate and I can let my instincts take over and play fast off of him.”
None of this is a surprise to the Giants. They knew this was what they were getting — or at least hoped for it — when they drafted him third overall.
“He certainly has very, very good instincts as a football player,” coach Brian Daboll said. “Some players do exactly what’s on the paper. ‘I run 12 yards, I stop, I turn.’ And then you have other players that are very instinctive players. ‘If I run to 12 yards and turn here, I’m going to be covered, but if I do this, I’m not.’ He’s a little bit of a see-ball, get-ball kind of guy. He’s done a nice job with what we’ve asked him to do and we’ll see how it grows.”
And how the Giants grow around him, too.
Carter said he doesn’t think too much about the big picture when he’s on the field. He’s mostly just focused on his own role. Thibodeaux did say that Carter has gotten “a lot smarter” about when to use certain moves, but a good portion of that increased awareness is really just the rest of the Giants learning about what he likes and doesn’t like. While the Giants use a lot of complicated personnel groupings and schematic flairs to deploy Carter at various positions, his mission is kept relatively simple. As Daboll said: See ball, get ball.
“Everybody has their job to do, so wherever I’m at, wherever I’m lined up, I’m doing my own job,” Carter said. “Everybody else has got to do their job, and that’s how the play works.”
Carson and Carl Banks and the rest of the Giants learned how to do that with Taylor. They found that by facilitating splash plays by Taylor and allowing him to shine, they actually flourished more. If the other 10 Giants on the field with Carter this season can learn that and can keep up with him, the music that emerges could become just as eclectic and just as symphonic.
The great Overture of 1981 may finally be matched.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
