Dolphins Toe The Line As Sellout Taylor Tries To Have His Cake And Dance On It, Too

“Once you are dancing with the devil, the prettiest capers won’t help you.”
–E.T.A.W. Hoffman

For years, I’ve tried to embrace my Miami Dolphins fandom by forcing myself to like Jason Taylor. I could never argue that he wasn’t one of the elite defensive ends in the game, a difference-maker with a non-stop motor. I did my best to ignore his seemingly every-other-year disappearing acts early in his career. I looked the other way when he seemed to emphasize modeling and doing local commercials over conditioning. I stuck up for him when he kept finding himself in strange, dangerous situations, involved in road-rage incidents, violent confrontations with family members, multiple and messy public separations from his wife. Because he was articulate and charismatic, these incidents were mostly glossed over by a media that preferred to focus their attacks on people they didn’t understand, like Ricky Williams. His ability to offer a great quote or a memorable sound byte seemed to make Taylor a Teflon man in the Miami area. But there was always something about him that bothered me, a sensed selfishness, a perceived phoniness that made it harder than it should have been for me to like him.

So when Taylor elected to take part in “Dancing with the Stars” over working to erase the stench of a 1-15 season and adapting to a new system implemented by executive vice president of football operations Bill Parcells, coach Tony Sparano and general manager Jeff Ireland, I certainly wasn’t surprised. As the losses had piled up in Miami over the past few years, Taylor had increasingly distanced himself from the franchise, outwardly expressing his disappointment and, last year, seemingly losing some of the trademark fire that had propelled his game. With an eye toward an assumed Hollywood career that seems built on a house of cards, football had become secondary to Taylor, and the proof of that was cemented when Taylor traded in his helmet for a tutu and cast aside his presumed role as team leader for a twinkle-toed chance at reality show “stardom.” His role models had gone from Butkus to Baryshnikov, from Lawrence Taylor to Tinker Bell.

When Sparano recently tersely announced during a mini-camp that Taylor had decided to skip team activities (even though “Dancing with the Stars” had ended) and had made it clear he would not even participate in training camp a few months away, I was again unsurprised. Word is that J.T. had fallen in love with the idea of becoming the next sports “star” to make the transition to a film career, with his eyes on making romantic comedies along the lines of the Rock. I won’t even get into how ridiculous it is to want to model yourself to “actors” like the Rock; that’s a completely different column. As laughable as it is to consider all the “reports” that he has multiple multi-million dollar movie deals just waiting for him to say the word, what is perhaps most chapping is that Taylor thinks he can have it both ways. He thinks he can turn his back on his team, choose the bright lights of the movie industry and then slide his way onto another team so he can steal a championship ring before he ducks out of the game and into a series of horrible movies.

He wants to have a winning team handed to him so he can further boost his Hollywood stock. He wants to use football as a hobby to further his acting aspirations, without having to work too hard in either. The reality is any sense of honor or nobility or manhood would mean that he would choose one or the other. Pissing down the leg of Bill Parcells is certainly not the way to try to force your team’s hand; the Tuna is just stubborn and red-assed enough to force Taylor to retire purely out of spite. And I don’t blame him.

Perhaps most laughably, the Miami media has nearly to a man jumped on Taylor’s side, in a clear and disturbing example of sportswriters getting too close to the players they cover and sacrificing objectivity for some type of tenuous “friendship.” These writers seem so thrilled with the idea of having a buddy in Taylor (“He likes me! He really likes me!”) that they haven’t considered the fact that J.T. is using them to fight his battles through articles, columns and blogs. Not helping the matter is that there is a left-over, pissed-off sentiment arising from the media freeze-out imposed by Nick Saban and somewhat continued by the Tuna, and that’s leading the writers to take unwarranted potshots at the new administration. And that’s why some of these “journalists” wind up sounding like spurned eight-year-olds in discussing Sparano’s tactics and questionable experience (“What he said and did to get players in line at New Haven, and to freeze some squeaky campus newspaper reporter in his tracks, doesn’t fly here,” wrote one local hack).

The reality is the Dolphins can fine Taylor as much as $300,000 if he skips every day of training camp. For a guy who is slated to make $15.5 million over the next two years, that certainly doesn’t sound like much. But he’s the team’s lone remaining marketable commodity after the unceremonious departure of Zach Thomas, so why should Miami be forced by a part-time football player to accept a deal for less-than-value to simply grant his wishes and trade him to a team that is already a contender? What do the Dolphins have to gain by helping a 34-year-old prima-donna achieve his Hollywood dreams while stepping on their backs to get to a Super Bowl with a different team?

Admittedly, blame lies on both sides. J.T. elected to act like a bitch-ass because of a perceived snub from the triumvirate of Parcells, Sparano and Ireland, while the Dolphins brass decided to air this dirty laundry during a time when Miami has some good stories going (they’ve signed five of nine draft choices already, far and away the best start in the league; Ricky Williams and Ronnie Brown look good; competition is fierce at all positions in mini-camps). But while one would expect players to take Taylor’s side in this to a man, former Dolphins All-Pro defensive end Manny Fernandez nailed the situation perfectly when he said, “Jason’s got a very inflated feeling of self-worth. He’s setting himself up as the perfect martyr.”

At this point, I’d prefer to see Miami force Taylor’s hand and force him to spend his days sipping lattes with Paulie Shore in San Bernardino as the football season shockingly goes on without him. A fourth-rounder so Taylor can try to bleed a few more dollars out of a questionable and fledgling acting career? Or taking a stand against the Nancy-fied, entitled, prima-donna bullshit that we see so increasingly in professional sports?

I’m with the ‘Fins on this one, so tap-dance your punk ass into the sunset, J.T. That’s Dennis Rodman on line one, by the way; he’s got some exciting ideas for sequels to “Double Team” and “Simon Sez” that he’d like to talk to you about.

Miami Herald: “Taylor, Dolphins Head for Showdown,” Jeff Darlington

Miami Herald: “Nothing has changed since news that Taylor won’t be in camp,” Armando Salguero

Miami Herald: “This ending is unfitting for Dolphins’ Taylor,” Israel Gutierrez

South Florida Sun-Sentinel: “The dance with Taylor takes an ugly turn,” Ethan Skolnick

South Florida Sun-Sentinel: “Jason Taylor tango nears end with Dolphins,” Harvey Fialkov

Palm Beach Post: “Dolphins raise many questions with suspicious JT statement,” Tim Graham

Palm Beach Post: “Dolphins miss chance at best trade value,” Greg Stoda

Palm Beach Post: “Dolphins coach Sparano clumsy in handling first big test,” Dave George