Yesterday I touched on my least favorite Patriot, Bill Belichick. It's much more personal with my least favorite Dolphin, Jason Taylor. Taylor loves taking cheap shots at Jets fans. I remember seeing an NFL Films documentary on the Monday Night Miracle. Taylor wouldn't stop yelling at the fans in the stands early in the game. After his defense surrendered an epic comeback, he got really quiet.
His obsession with Jets fans only got bigger from there.
Here's what he said in 2004 about Jets fans:
"… a bunch of them chanting their dumb-ass chant and all that other stuff, being the ignorant fans they are. I said it. I don't care if they get mad at me or not. They don't like me anyway. Quite frankly, I don't care… I'm just being real. I'm telling the truth. You carry yourself with some class, and we'll talk about you as if you've got class. If you want to act crazy and do all the crazy things they do, I'll call a spade a spade."
He doesn't go into much detail. I guess fans chanting makes them classless even though every team's fans chant. I do agree, however, that one should act with class in order to treated as classy.
After the Jets beat Taylor 40-13 in Miami in 2007:
They (stink) too," Taylor said. "They beat us. They'll go home happy, and their fans will be happy that they got three wins this year. Good for them."
And Taylor was unhappy because he only got 1 win that year and got crushed by said 3 win team by 27 on his home field. It was great to see Taylor carrying himself with class in defeat, though.
In 2009 on potentially signing with the Jets:
"It’d be very, very, very difficult. Very difficult."
He said he might consider the Patriots, "but the Jets are the Jets."
"I’ve had a lot of history saying bad things about Jets fans," he said. "The fireman hat guy and all of the people in New York that are Jets fans are not the ones that are working on Wall Street. I’ve said all of those things. So I’ve got to leave it at that."
This one is tough to figure. First of all, he's wrong. A lot of Jets fans work on Wall Street. Second of all, considering what some of the people on Wall Street have done to the economy of this country, is that really an insult? Third of all, he seems to imply there's something wrong with regular working class people. Total class.
For all of his talk, you would think he's got as many rings as Charles Haley. Unlike Belichick, though, who has earned begruding respect for all of his success, Taylor has won nothing in his career. He's never gotten past the Divisional Playoffs. His team hasn't even played a competitive game in that round. In any event, those games were a long time ago. Jason hasn't been to the Playoffs since 2001. Even though he was considered one of the leaders of the Dolphins' locker room, the team engineered a 10 win turnaround after he left in 2008. His new team, the Redskins, missed the Playoffs a year after earning a spot.
Is all of this his fault? Of course not but his 0 career postseason sacks indicates the degree to which he turns it on in the biggest moments and the impact he has in critical games. The bottom line is for how much he talks, you'd think he would have won something. Heck, for how much he talks about the Jets, you'd think his career record against them would be better than 6-16.
It's funny how much Dolphins fans hate Rex Ryan for trash talking. They adore Taylor after all.