Lawrence Taylor Is the Only Defensive Player Ever Named Unanimous NFL MVP

Lawrence Taylor won the NFL MVP award in 1986 with 20.5 sacks, and he is the only defensive player ever chosen unanimously. He also won Defensive Player of the Year three times, including as a rookie, and changed how offenses are built.

Taylor retired with 132.5 sacks, and that total undercounts him: sacks only became an official statistic in 1982, his second season, so his rookie year does not appear in it. He made ten Pro Bowls, was first-team All-Pro eight times, and won two Super Bowls with the Giants. In 1981 he won Defensive Rookie of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year in the same season, which nobody else has done.

The structural argument is what puts him first. Before Taylor, the left tackle was an ordinary offensive lineman. Teams did not have a plan for a 237-pound outside linebacker with defensive end power and safety speed attacking a quarterback blind side, so they built one. The premium left tackle contract, the extra tight end kept in to chip, the max protection call: these are all answers to a question Taylor asked.

Coordinators game-planned around where he was standing, which means he was winning plays he never appeared in. A defense that forces an offense to devote two blockers to one man has effectively played eleven against nine everywhere else. That is a form of dominance the box score cannot record, and it is why teammates like Carl Banks and Leonard Marshall had the seasons they had.

Reggie White is the serious counter. He finished with 198 sacks to Taylor's 132.5, won two Defensive Player of the Year awards, and was probably the better pure football player: bigger, just as fast, and unblockable one on one. J.J. Watt matched the three DPOY awards. Bruce Smith holds the sack record at 200. Myles Garrett may pass them all.

Sack totals favor White, and honestly so. What they do not capture is that the sport reorganized itself around Taylor and not around White. One man made the NFL rewrite its formations, its protection schemes and its pay scale. That is a different category of impact, and it is why the MVP vote in 1986 was unanimous.

The verdict: Lawrence Taylor. The sport rearranged itself around him. Reggie White for the pure sack total.