Belichick Will Fight Any Man Who Tries to Compare Someone to Lawrence Taylor

What a golden moment. Belichick, cruising along in an otherwise mundane Wednesday press conference, Q-ing & A-ing along about the Bears and what a challenge they’ll be Sunday, when someone inadvertently hits a raw nerve.

Q: You’ve see a lot of good pass rushers in your career starting with Lawrence Taylor. Does Mack rank up there with the better ones you’ve seen?

>Record scccrrraaatttccchhh<

BB: Now, wait a minute. We’re talking about Lawrence Taylor now. Yeah, I’m not putting anybody in Lawrence Taylor’s class. So, you can put everybody down below that. With a lot of respect to a lot of good players now, but we’re talking about Lawrence Taylor.

How’s that for a window into this man’s soul. There’s nobody in the coaching business who can touch him when it comes to the fine art of saying great things about an opponent. Whether it’s some overwhelmed quarterback or some hapless coach on the verge of getting fired. Asking him about some downtrodden team and hint that it might be an easy game and he’ll throw in your face that time in 2004 when his team was 12-2 facing a 2-11 Dolphins team and lost.

But referencing Lawrence Taylor where he draws the line. LT is the Operation piece you can’t pull out of his heart without setting off the buzzer, lighting up his nose and sending 120 volts of hot, electric pain running up your arm.

For the record, just last year Belichick went on Paul Rabil’s podcast (which recently also featured business mogul Erika Nardini) and called Taylor “the best defensive player I’ve ever coached, by a good margin.” Adding:

“Taylor had the ability, when he stood on the end of the line of scrimmage, which is where he played as an outside linebacker/defensive end, he could just tell, it didn’t matter who the person was, or what the play was, or anything else, he could just tell by the look of the opponent on the other side of the line of scrimmage who was going to block him, and that was by how scared they were.

“When that tackle was looking at him like, ‘If I’m one split-second late out of my stance, if I am a few inches off on my angle or step, this guy’s going to be behind me.’ They’d have that scared to death look. And Taylor could just tell by looking at the guy whether the guy was blocking him or not.”

So back off, pal. Get a job. You can take your comparisons between Lawrence Taylor and any other human being and shove them up your ass because he’s not going to sit still for it. In the meantime, it’s never not a good time to watch the highlight videos of old great players. And nobody has tape like LT does.

Chills. So stop trying to throw ridiculous comparisons at Belichick, and instead work on finding someone in your life who talks about you the way he talks about Lawrence Taylor.