Jason Taylor knows, a telling part of his football legacy comes down to a simple matter of appearance. He ushered in a changed mindset on the undersized pass rusher. He helped the derogatory "tweener" label evolve in the NFL to the desired "hybrid" one.
Even now, on the edge of his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, people can't grasp his lack of stereotypical girth. He's often congratulated for losing weight in retirement rather than becoming the fattened ex-athlete.
"I weigh a pound more than when I played," he says, now 42.
If it's a surprise he's 242 pounds, his career path to Saturday's enshrinement in Canton, Ohio, is pockmarked by unconventional surprise. He conquered a childhood of poverty without his biological father. He didn't play football until a high school junior. He received one college scholarship offer _ and only after his high school coach begged an Akron assistant to watch him play basketball.
He hurt so much after losing that he'd hide in the Dolphins' locker room to cry. He became so obsessed that his email and cellphone password for years was "Twenty-three," as in the single-season NFL sack record he chased. He became such a leader that he went out of character and threw an epic postgame fit after a loss in Cleveland that makes him laugh now. Coach Nick Saban thought it turned around the 2005 season.
Taylor's appearance _ his too-thin frame _ is central to his story, though. It's why he became a Dolphin. Jimmy Johnson, who will present Taylor at the induction, told Taylor the back-story of his draft the other day at Johnson's Big Chill restaurant in Tavernier, Fla.
Norv Turner, then the Washington Redskins' coach, coached Taylor in the Senior Bowl. Taylor was such a lesser name only one team would privately work him out. But he lit it up that week to the point Turner considered him the best player on the field, as he later told Johnson, his former Dallas Cowboys boss, who was then coaching the Dolphins.
"He also said Jason was so small that [Redskins general manager] Charley Casserly wouldn't take him," Johnson recalled. "I figured if he wasn't taking him after working with him that meant I had a chance to wait and get him."
Johnson wanted both Taylor and cornerback Sam Madison in that draft. But other teams would take Madison higher, he figured.
"That's why I took him in the second round and you in the third," he told Taylor.
"You SOB, you cost me a lot of money," Taylor said.
"You made it up," Johnson responded.
