Saquon pays pal uLTimate compliment
The Giants never had to face the original Lawrence Taylor, but their biggest star thinks LT 2.0 is on the other side of a rivalry.
Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons is trying to follow in Taylor’s 1981 footsteps as the only players to win Rookie of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year in the same season. He is close friends with Giants running back Saquon Barkley through their shared Penn State roots.
“I’ve never really seen anything like him. He’s really LTlike, to be honest,” Barkley told Yahoo Sports as part of the Gatorade Player of the Year announcements, only five days before the second Giants-Cowboys game of the season. “It is what it is: He’s insane. Every week, [Parsons is] one of those guys that, even if I can’t watch his game, I’ll look and say, ‘What is he doing?’
“And I am not just saying this because we’re friends. The sky is really the limit with him. If he keeps working hard and keeping his head on straight, he can be even better than he is now. That’s the scary thing.”
Barkley let Parsons stay with him for a brief time before the NFL draft and was privately hoping they would be Giants teammates. It was a possibility up until the Giants were on the clock and traded out of the No. 11 pick — acquiring an extra 2022 first-rounder and later selecting Kadarius Toney — and allowed the Cowboys to steal Parsons (character red flags and all) at No. 12.
“He’s playing extremely well,” Barkley said. “Hopefully, he can turn that down a notch this week when we play them. But it’s fun going against Micah, and as a competitor when you’ve got one of the — you could argue — best players in the league, it’s going to help bring out your best. Coming to MetLife [Stadium], you hope it brings you a little extra motivation to get back to the level I know I can get to.”
Parsons is seventh in the NFL with 12 sacks to go with his 75 tackles and three forced fumbles. He recently downplayed comparisons to Taylor — widely considered the greatest defensive player of all time — by saying he wants to be “my own man” and force other people to say, “You pass rush like Micah.”
Patriots coach Bill Belichick — who was Giants defensive coordinator at the peak of Taylor’s greatness — often shoots down any comparisons to LT. Another NFL coach with ties to that era, Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians, agreed.
“He’s started to have a heck of a career,” Arians said on the “Dan Patrick Show” of Parsons, who his team faced in Week 1, “but when you’re talking about the best defensive player in the history of this league, slow down a little on it.”