Taylor was a Star for the Ages…

Yesterday was a nightmare. Every Redskin fan feels the same. You cannot get your mind off of the tragic death of Sean Taylor. It makes no sense. We don’t know him personally. He just entertained us, right? Maybe he led a horrible life and this was bound to happen. That’s what people keep saying to me–as if it helps. Maybe this 24 year old kid who occasionally made dumb decisiouns somehow brought this on himself. That’s supposed to make me feel better? Does that somehow justify the death of a father? Of a son? Of an incredibly talented kid with everything in front of him? I don’t think so.

I make mistakes. I can act like a dick. I’m sure I am capable of pissing off the wrong people (in fact I’ve been known to do that). I get older and smarter, though, and little by little, I think I improve as a person. That’s what people are supposed to do. That is what Sean Taylor was doing. That is why he is so beloved by this organization and this city. Sean had flaws off the field, but he was good, and he could not possibly deserve the consequences he suffered.

On the football field, Sean didn’t need to improve. He did constantly, but he could have stopped improving his rookie year and had a stellar career. He did improve, though. He changed his game. He went from a blitzing run stopper who could knock your block off to a coverage safey who was a threat to pick the ball off at all times and could STILL knock your block off.

I don’t know how every Skins fan feels, but I know that over the last three years–no matter how bad it got, and only Skins fans can know what “bad” truly means–I kept thinking, “We still have Sean Taylor”. We still had the best young defender in the league. We had a guy who made people think of Ronnie Lott, but then they remembered that this guy was faster than Lott, and he had better hands.
Was.

Had.

He is really gone.
I really can’t emphasize this enough, though. Sean Taylor was the most impressive safety that I have EVER seen play. His combination of speed, hands, and power was the best that I personally have ever witnessed in football. He won the skins a playoff game in Tampa. He made key plays throughout every game of his short career. Remember his two interceptions off of Favre this year? Remember how he closed on the ball even when way behind on a play? He could have had five picks that day.
Sean Taylor didn’t showboat. He didn’t talk trash. In fact, he barely spoke at all. He wasn’t on cribs. He wasn’t at high profile parties. His base salary never even broke a million. He practiced hard, though. He played even harder. I constantly felt lucky to have him on my favorite team. I couldn’t wait for the day that people everywhere knew that we had the best defender in the NFL. And I thought by that time Sean would be the model NFL player. The rest of the world would have known that he was more than a hard hitting thug. They know now—entirely too soon.