WFT retiring Sean Taylor's 21 this Sunday

[Duluther]

1 hour ago, Calamity_Cometh said:

You can't tell the history of the Washington Football Team without mentioning Sean Taylor. This isn't the Hall of Fame. Any player whose story demands telling for a franchise is quite reasonable for having their number retired.

You can’t tell the history of the Denver Broncos without mentioning Tim Tebow.

[Calamity_Cometh]

14 minutes ago, Duluther said:

You can’t tell the history of the Denver Broncos without mentioning Tim Tebow.

I knew that I would get hit with that as soon as I hit submit. I poorly worded my point.

Not all chapters deserve retirements, but I believe that Taylor's story does. So I admit fault in my point. It's subjective.

[Calamity_Cometh]

If the Broncos want to retire Tebows number though, they can go right ahead. He both introduced the world to Demaryius Thomas and led to Peyton Manning.

[e16bball]

7 hours ago, Calamity_Cometh said:

I knew that I would get hit with that as soon as I hit submit. I poorly worded my point.

Not all chapters deserve retirements, but I believe that Taylor's story does. So I admit fault in my point. It's subjective.

7 hours ago, Calamity_Cometh said:

If the Broncos want to retire Tebows number though, they can go right ahead. He both introduced the world to Demaryius Thomas and led to Peyton Manning.

No need to backpedal. By and large, Broncos fans don’t think Tebow’s number should be retired. By and large, Washington fans think Taylor’s number should be retired. That’s the whole point. There’s no particular bar or criteria for number retirement, it’s about what it means to the fans and the franchise. Saying, from the outside, that someone “doesn’t deserve it” seems to miss the point completely.

[TheKillerNacho]

They didn't already????

[JAF-N72EX]

On 10/15/2021 at 12:08 AM, MKnight82 said:

He has the ability to completely take over a game and win it single handily.  That’s extremely rare from the safety position.

No he didn't. He was a good player but there's no need to embellish. A defense with this caliber of a player that you're describing would never finish dead last in the league in any given season like the Redskins did.

Ironically the type of safety that you're describing here could be said for his contemporaries such as Troy, X, and Reed but certainly not Taylor and let's not act like Taylor belongs anywhere near the same discussion as those guys. If you wanna say his career trajectory was heading in that direction then that's fine, but he never reached that level.

 

On 10/15/2021 at 1:16 AM, 43M said:

100% agreed.

Taylor was just hitting his prime, and couldve easily been one of the all time greats, but I distinctly remember him pretty inconsistent in coverage early on in his career until his last year or so when he seemed to be putting it together more.

He was playing like an elite safety before he passed, and then shortly after, people started mentioning him with the top safeties of all time.    I never argued it much because he could've been, but his tragic passing propelled his legacy past reality. 

Its a tough topic to discuss, but the reality is, he didnt have enough prolonged success to be mentioned with the greatest safeties ever.   

He is just an extremely sad case of what could have been.

Yep. That's how I remember him too. I've always compared him alot to Mike Brown before his injuries. A mid-risk, high reward player with a ton of potential. He was always looking to either jump the route or get the knockout blow instead of making an easier play on the ball and/or tackle at the risk of giving up a big play even when he was caught out of position. The same against the run (which he was very good at), he would look for the knockout blow instead making the easier sure tackle and did it at a higher rate than you would like.

He was a very athletic player with good instincts, good closing speed, a motor that never quit, and could make a play from anywhere on the field. But he also relied on these intangibles too heavily and had a hard time balancing this with the fundamentals until his final year when he was seemingly starting to put it all together. 

As you said tho, it is a tough topic to discuss because of where he was heading and the what-if's involved.

 

On 10/15/2021 at 11:24 PM, e16bball said:

It’s really not about his on-field production. There are other ways, aside from play on the field, to create such a lasting legacy and impact within your organization and fanbase that it warrants retiring your number — and unfortunately, one of those ways is what happened with Sean, where his death was so tragic and so heartbreaking that it is most likely the most emotionally charged and galvanizing moment that this fanbase has experienced in going on three decades now.

I have no problem with that. But I do have a problem with people who talk as if Taylor was already a sure-fire 1st ballot hall of famer, and for the brass to use his name and tragedy in order to bury headlines.

[MKnight82]

Just now, JAF-N72EX said:

He was a good player but there's no need to embellish.

I'm not.

[BlaqOptic]

On 10/14/2021 at 11:38 PM, JAF-N72EX said:

He was good enough to have his number retired?  I'm not sure I agree with that.

Let's be real here. A large part of his praise as an NFL player derives from the fact that he died. Taylor was a very good player for a short time but nowhere near as good as some people make him out to be. That's all. *Ducks from incoming fans*

Gotta try to overwrite headlines any way you can though I guess. Nice job PR dept.

Thank God someone came in and said it before I did.

I'll be the first to admit... If Sean Taylor finished 2007 then he would've won the DPoTY. He was dominant in those 9 games. However, literally the year before he had the worst season a Safety had ever had in the Stats LLC stats tracking era. First Safety to give up 1,000 yards in coverage in a season ever... While also missing more tackles than any other Safety in the league that year...

[naptownskinsfan]