The 1981 NFL Draft was the procedure by which National Football League teams selected amateur college football players. It is officially known as the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting. The draft was held April 28–29, 1981. The league also held a supplemental draft after the regular draft and before the regular season.

For the first time, the top two picks of the draft were named Offensive and Defensive Rookies of the Year, respectively.

The National Football League Draft is an annual event in which the National Football League (NFL) teams select eligible college football players and it is their most common source of player recruitment. The basic design of the draft is that each team is given a position in the drafting order in reverse order relative its record in the previous year—the last place gets positioned first. With this position, the team can either select a player or trade their position to another team for other positions, a player, or players, or any combination thereof. After each team had utilized its position in the drafting order, whether by trading it or selecting a player, a round would be complete. Certain aspects of the draft, including team positioning and the number of rounds in the draft, have seen revisions since its first creation in 1936, but the fundamental methodology has remained the same. The original rationale in creating the draft was to increase the competitive parity between the teams as the worst team would, idealistically, have chosen the best player available.

Howard "Howie" Matthew Moses Long (born January 6, 1960, in Charlestown, Massachusetts) is an American former National Football League defensive end and actor. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2000. He is currently a studio analyst for Fox Network's NFL coverage.

He attended Milford High School in Milford, Massachusetts, and is a member of the Milford Hall of Fame. Long was an all-around athlete, playing football (lettered three years and was named to the Scholastic Coach All-America team as a senior, though he never played football until age 15), basketball (lettered three years as a forward), and track (lettered three years, competing in the shot-put, discus and javelin). Long also set state records in both the shot put and discus.

Long played college football and earned a degree in communications at Villanova University. He was a four-year letterman at Villanova and was selected to play in the Blue–Gray Football Classic and was named the MVP in 1980. As a freshman Long started every game and during that season he had 99 tackles. As a sophomore Long led Villanova in sacks with 5 and recorded 78 tackles. The next season, 1979, Long sustained a thigh injury and missed three games and ended the season with 45 tackles. As a senior Long again led the Wildcats in sacks with 4 and had 84 tackles. He began as a tight end but was moved to the defensive line playing mostly noseguard his first two seasons. After moving to defensive end he earned All-East honors and honorable mention All-American by his senior year. Long also boxed at Villanova and was the Northern Collegiate Heavyweight Boxing Champion.

Ryan David Leaf (born May 15, 1976) is a former American football player who was a quarterback in the National Football League (NFL) for four seasons. He played for the San Diego Chargers and the Dallas Cowboys between 1998 and 2001, and also spent time with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Seattle Seahawks.

Leaf had a successful college career at Washington State University, where he was a finalist for the Heisman Trophy after his junior year. He was selected as the second overall pick in the 1998 NFL Draft, but his career was short and interrupted by injuries. An episode of NFL Top 10 ranked him as the No. 1 "draft bust" in NFL history.

After having led his high school, Charles M. Russell High School, to the 1992 Montana state title, Leaf played college football at Washington State University. He played in 32 games for the Cougars, starting 24 of them. In his junior year, he averaged 330.6 yards passing per game and threw for a then Pac-10 conference record 33 touchdowns. He also helped the Cougars defeat the Washington Huskies 41-35 for the first time in Husky Stadium since 1985. Leaf ended the school's 67-year Rose Bowl drought and helped bring the Cougars their first Pac-10 championship in school history. Despite a strong early showing by Leaf in the Rose Bowl, the Cougars were defeated 21-16 by the eventual national champion Michigan Wolverines. In 2011, Leaf published a memoir of this season, entitled 596 Switch.^{[citation needed]}

Lawrence Julius Taylor (born February 4, 1959), nicknamed "L.T.", is a Hall of Fame former American football player. Taylor played his entire professional career as a linebacker for the New York Giants in the National Football League (NFL). He is considered to be one of the greatest players in the history of football, and has been ranked as the top defensive player in league history by former players, coaches, media members, and news outlets such as the NFL Network, and Sporting News.

After an All-American career at the University of North Carolina (UNC) (1978–1981), Taylor was drafted by the Giants as the second overall selection in the 1981 NFL Draft. Although controversy surrounded the selection due to Taylor's contract demands, the two sides quickly resolved the issue. Taylor won several defensive awards after his rookie season. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Taylor was a disruptive force at outside linebacker, and is credited with changing the pass rushing schemes, offensive line play, and offensive formations used in the NFL. Taylor produced double-digit sacks each season from 1984 through 1990, including a career high of 20.5 in 1986. He also won a record three Defensive Player of the Year awards and was named the league's Most Valuable Player (MVP) for his performance during the 1986 season. He was named First-team All-Pro in each of his first nine seasons and was a key member of the Giants' defense, nicknamed "The Big Blue Wrecking Crew", that led New York to victories in Super Bowls XXI and XXV. During the 1980s Taylor, fellow linebackers Carl Banks, Gary Reasons, and Hall of Famer Harry Carson gave the Giants linebacking corps a reputation as one of the best in the NFL.