ONCE A GIANT

The inside story of the 1986 New York Giants.

Myers, the author of Brady vs. Manning, has covered the NFL since 1978. He got off to a rocky start when he reported dissent surrounding newly drafted player Lawrence Taylor’s salary, nearly causing Taylor to back out of the deal in solidarity with his fellow players; said the Giants owner to the 27-year-old journalist afterward, “My respect for you as a newspaper man has greatly diminished.” Had Taylor walked, the miracle of 1986 might not have happened. Chalk that up to Taylor, Phil Simms, Mark Bavaro, and a disciplined and talented roster—and, of course, coach Bill Parcells, “who turned around four programs and always departed on his own terms, a rarity in the coaching profession, leaving players and fans wanting more.” There’s celebration in this story but also plenty of cautionary tale. As the author notes, the average career in the NFL is a mere 3.3 years, and until very recently, the NFL did nothing to help players adjust to life beyond the stadium. As a result, many of the players on that storied ’86 team wound up in trouble. After he retired in 1993, Taylor developed a $1,000-per-day crack habit, an addiction so widely known that many voters sought to keep him out of the Hall of Fame. Other players became addicted, too, and often homeless. Several, by the author’s account, admitted to contemplating suicide, one by driving off the old Tappan Zee Bridge across the Hudson River. Fortunately, as Myers writes, most have come out of the depths, some with Parcells’ financial help, even though the Giants alums are now aging and suffer various football-related maladies decades after the fact—a grim but matter-of-fact conclusion to a tale that is seldom happy but that makes for urgent reading.

That cliché about a football team being a family? As Myers shows in this absorbing book, it’s true, dysfunction and all.