Jacoby Gears Up for His Rematch With Taylor : Giants’ Linebacker Made Him Look Bad in Dec. 7 24-14 Loss at Washington

The microphones stood ready. The cameras and reporters were in their places. It was the first day of the NFC championship game media blitz at Redskin Park, and offensive tackle Joe Jacoby was there to absorb it all.

“We need (John) Riggins for this,” Jacoby said, laughing into the limelight.

Jacoby, the quiet giant, has become a most unusual subplot in the story of the Washington Redskins’ attempt to defeat the New York Giants today at Giants Stadium.

He has New York right outside linebacker Lawrence Taylor to thank for his infamy. It was Taylor who got past Jacoby on the left side of the Redskins’ line for two sacks (left guard Russ Grimm officially gave up the third Taylor sack) and several near misses in New York’s 24-14 victory at RFK Stadium Dec. 7. It was Taylor who made Jacoby look bad on national television -- and Jacoby almost never looks bad. It was Taylor who very likely cost Jacoby a fourth consecutive trip to the Pro Bowl.

Jacoby was given the unenviable assignment of trying, by himself, to keep Taylor off quarterback Jay Schroeder. He said it was the most frustrating day he has had in his six years as a professional.

Now, five weeks later, this time with a clublike cast on his broken right hand, he will get to try again.

“I look at it as two good players going at each other,” Jacoby said Wednesday. “Lawrence was coming at me. You can’t make a mistake against a great player. He’s going to take advantage of it. He did that game.”

Although the Redskins, of course, will not divulge their exact strategy against Taylor, they are expected to give Jacoby most of the responsibility. Offensive tackle Mark May, who lines up on the right side of the Washington line, said Taylor comes at the offense’s left side “90 percent of the time.” That’s because Taylor and right defensive end Leonard Marshall work well together on stunts and other tricks and schemes.

Washington Coach Joe Gibbs said it’s hard to pin Taylor down. “He’s on our left, he’s on our right, and, in nickel, he goes in pairs, doubling up on one side, and he either comes or he drops. Then, sometimes, he goes into the middle and roves the middle and blitzes from that spot. Basically, he’s left, right and center.”

But more right than anything else, which brings us back to Jacoby. “I probably will see him the majority of the time,” he said. “It depends how they flip-flop him. He’s a great player. He’s had good games all year.”

Jacoby, one of the kindest, gentlest 6-foot-7, 305-pound people you will ever meet, hadn’t had much to say about his encounter with Taylor until Wednesday.

“I don’t know if I would call it embarrassment,” he said. “Maybe just a bad day at the office.”

The Redskins thought Jacoby could handle Taylor one-on-one last month. Gibbs said the other day he was “really shocked” by what happened. Since then, there has been time for viewing and reviewing the films of the game and for figuring out what went wrong.

Although Jacoby said looking at the tapes once “was enough,” he actually saw them several times. Taylor, he said, was doing nothing differently. He was just doing it all very well.

“You look at what happened, why it happened,” Jacoby said. “A lot of it was his great speed and quickness. Some of it was my mental adjustments, making some mental mistakes.”

The offensive linemen got the word first thing Wednesday morning that the little things they worked on last summer would be repeated this week in practice.

“When something like that happens, it’s more or less technique,” May said. “When things happen, you drop your head, your hands are down. . . . These are things that will be looked at, starting today.”

There have been many questions asked about the possibility of helping Jacoby block Taylor with another player, say a tight end. The Redskins are considering every option this week, but, in general, they don’t like having to use two men on one opponent.

“A lot of people say, ‘Why don’t you move the tight end over there?’ ” Grimm said. “Well, all he does is flip over to the other side. It’s kind of hard to track him down.”

“I don’t think you can count on the fact you’ll know where he’ll be,” Gibbs said. The Redskins also don’t like the idea of changing the strength of their formation if the second blocker has to move when Taylor moves.

Jacoby’s broken hand and cast have received much attention, but, in reality, they don’t seem to be much of a factor one way or the other.

“At the end of the Chicago game, it was getting heavy on me,” Jacoby said. “It was throbbing.”

Wednesday was the 10th day of his recovery. “The bone is starting to mend back,” he said. “I can still hear a little pop in there, so for protection, I will wear (the cast) again this week.”

Inside the cast, Jacoby will be holding a rubber ball or cotton, he said, “just to have a grip on something.”

Now that he is comfortable with his cast, Jacoby is getting used to the idea of going against Taylor for a third time this season. Said Jacoby: “You just have to play the supreme game against him.”

Defensive lineman Steve Hamilton, who underwent an arthroscopic exam on his sprained right knee after the last Redskins-Giants game, practiced a bit and said he thinks he will be ready to be activated.