New Giants pass rusher Abdul Carter said Thursday night that he would like to wear Lawrence Taylor’s retired No. 56.
Cowboys pass rusher Micah Parsons, Carter’s Penn State predecessor, asked Carter on Bleacher Report‘s NFL Draft show if he wanted to wear No. 11 — which both players wore at Penn State and Parsons still wears in Dallas.
“I don’t know. I got a different number in mind,” Carter said. “Fifty-six sounds real good, but we’re gonna have a conversation.”
Carter then implied on Friday afternoon that he was talking to the Giants about his options. He was asked about “a couple of numbers that are already retired that you would probably be eyeing”: Phil Simms’ retired No. 11 and Taylor’s No. 56.
“We’re still in the process of that, but we’ll see what happens,” Carter said in his first official visit to the team’s New Jersey facility as a Giant.
So which number would he prefer?
“We’re see what happens,” he repeated.
The Giants set the precedent of unretiring numbers when the late Ray Flaherty’s family gave Malik Nabers permission to be the first Giant to wear No. 1 since 1935.
Taylor, however, is considered by many to be the best player in NFL history. And Simms is an iconic two-time Super Bowl winning Giants quarterback.
Unretiring either number would be controversial and, frankly, stunning — not to mention how much extra pressure it would put on Carter to perform at an elite level immediately.
Carter clarified that he “just want[s] to follow in [Taylor’s] footsteps” — not be him.
“He’s the greatest football of all time, somebody I look up to,” he said. “I just want to chase greatness, and knowing that he was the best, that’s what I want to chase. But I didn’t say it like, ‘I want to be better than Lawrence Taylor.’ That’s more me looking up to him, inspired to be like him.”
For what it’s worth, new Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart vouched on Friday for Carter as a special talent.
Dart and Ole Miss beat Carter’s Nittany Lions soundly, 38-25, in the 2023 Peach Bowl. But Dart distinctly remembers one Carter play that opened his eyes.
“He doesn’t really have a weakness. He can do it all,” Dart said of Carter. “He’s so versatile. I played him when he was playing in the box at the linebacker position, and how he was able to disrupt the game from that.
“I still remember a play we had on short yardage where he chased from the end of the line of scrimmage all the way back to the other side of the field and almost made a tackle on a running back for a loss,” he added. “[He] actually stopped him before he got to the first down…. Not many people on this Earth can make a play like that.”
Carter also had a strip sack of Dart in that game that was overturned to an incomplete pass.
Dart still threw for 379 yards and three touchdowns in the win, however. So he earned Carter’s respect in the process, too.
“I’m a big fan of Jaxson,” he said. “Just seeing how accurate he was dishing the ball out, I knew he was a good quarterback. It was a great pickup… He’s tough… If you beat Penn State in a big game like that, I know you’re the real deal, especially at quarterback.”
Dart is known for having a strong pocket presence and keeping plays alive. Carter said he can vouch for that.
“That’s definitely a toughness attribute,” he said. “When we were playing, I landed a really good shot on him, and he got right back up and dusted off like nothing happened.”
The mutual respect between the Giants’ two first-round picks was obvious. Now the question is whether the Giants have a high enough opinion of Carter to award him the number of the best player in their franchise history.
