On Tuesday, Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor went off on former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason, who repeated during a Showtime documentary his belief that the Giants coddled L.T. during his career.
Among other things, Taylor called Esiason a “dickhead.”
On Wednesday, Esiason responded.
“Never did I think I would see [dickhead] actually next to my name in a newspaper, but that’s just the way it works — the slings and arrows that we all have to endure in the business in which we work,” Esiason said during his weekday radio show on WFAN, with Craig Carton. (I specifically mentioned Carton because if I didn’t mention Carton, Carton would say, “Hey, why didn’t he mention me?”) “I’ve been down this road 10 years ago, and I’m down it again. It’s unfortunate.”
Esiason corrected Taylor on one point.
“The only thing about where L.T. is wrong is I don’t hate L.T.,” Esiason said. “He may think I hate him. I don’t hate him. And what I do hate, is I hate the fact that he wrote the book, and he basically trashed the Giants, [Bill] Parcells, [Bill] Belichick and everything else.”
Esiason also made it clear that he stands by his comments.
“I don’t back down on anything that I said,” Esiason said. “I tried to be as understanding and as supportive of the addictions that he had, and recognize -- because of my time with Stanley Wilson in Cincinnati -- that people in that situation aren’t who they really are. They just aren’t. They’re taken over by the drug.”
Boomer is right, but that doesn’t mean Taylor will keep quiet. For the purposes of sheer entertainment, we kind of hope he doesn’t. Even though he should.