Sage Rosenfels column: In praise of Jason Taylor, the ideal pass-rusher
Sage Rosenfels is a former 12-year NFL quarterback who writes, does radio, and podcasts about the NFL and college football.
My former teammate, Jason Taylor, is going to be inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame this week. I spent four years with Taylor in Miami, from 2002-05, as well as a quick two-week stint in 2011. I find myself extremely lucky to have played alongside Taylor, as well as the other great players on those Dolphins defenses of the early 2000s. This defense was loaded with talent at all three levels - defensive line, linebackers, and the secondary. We had six Pro Bowlers on defense in 2002, and four in 2003. Though he didn’t make the Pro Bowl in Miami, Junior Seau was still a destructive, playmaking force during those seasons as well. I always spoke with opposing teams’ quarterbacks before games, and no offense wanted to play against our defense.
The leaders of those defenses were Taylor and middle linebacker Zach Thomas. I played with a handful of defensive Hall of Famers during the course of my career, and I’d pick Thomas as a teammate and leader over any of them. He was the heart and soul of those Dolphin teams. If he never makes the NFL Hall of Fame, they should start an under-6-foot HOF and name it after him. The guy was a nitty-gritty superstar who treated everyone he met with the utmost respect.
Taylor was a consummate defensive end.
His ridiculous athleticism, quickness, ability to create leverage, and competitive spirit shined in that defensive scheme. This is what I’d like to discuss: the Dolphins' “Double Switch” defense of that era. If you are a football Xs-and-Os geek, you may like where this goes.
Going back to the Dallas Cowboys of the '90s, Dave Wannstedt used a style of defense which had a ton of success in the NFL. He and Jimmy Johnson brought that defense to the Dolphins in the late '90s and early 2000s. Jim Bates, who was a vastly underrated NFL defensive coordinator, ran the defense once Wannstedt became head coach.
The scheme’s foundation was the defensive line, and its first job was to stop the run. In the middle was Tim Bowens, the strongest player on the roster, and probably in the NFL. If it weren’t for back issues which ended his career early, Bowens could have been headed to the Hall of Fame as well. I believe I saw him bench press 405 pounds about a dozen times on a team testing day. Oddly, I don’t remember him benching all that much during my time in the weight room. Generally he was drinking coffee and chatting it up with other players. Teams couldn’t block Bowens, so many times their center and guard would end up double-teaming him. Thomas made almost 1,100 tackles over the course of his career. He was great, but many of those tackles were because of Bowens.
The other defensive tackle was Larry Chester, a squatty 350-pounder who was also stout against the run. At left defensive end was Adewale Ogunleye. Since most teams set their tight end to the right, Ogunleye had to be stout against the run, but also athletic enough to harass a quarterback. He made the Pro Bowl in 2003.
Because of the dominance of our defensive front, our linebackers were small and quick. They had to be big enough to play the run, but more importantly, cover the other team’s skill position players man to man. The reason for this is that in the “Double Switch” defensive scheme, the two safeties played deep. The only time they came down near the line of scrimmage was on the very rare occasion we struggled to stop the run. For the most part, their job was to play over top the linebackers and corners to double offensive threats in the passing game.
The corners also played man to man. Sam Madison and Patrick Surtain had very different styles, but both could chase all day after pestering receivers at the line of scrimmage. Random fact of the day: Surtain’s son, Patrick Surtain Jr., is the top high school corner in the country headed into his senior year.
As stated earlier, stopping the run was the priority on this defense. Because of the front seven, and the secondary’s ability to eliminate quick throws with their in-your-face technique, quarterbacks we faced had to hold onto the ball longer than they were used to, and that's when Taylor did his thing at right defensive end. Teams in the AFC East actually began drafting extra slot receivers, hoping to pick on whoever was our third-best corner.
If you look at the vast majority of defensive ends who have recently entered, or who will some day enter, the NFL’s Hall of Fame, many of them played in some sort of two-deep safety defense. Julius Peppers, Jared Allen, DeMarcus Ware, Dwight Freeney, John Abraham, Simeon Rice, and Robert Mathis are all on the NFL’s career top 20 sack list. For the majority of their careers, each of these defensive ends played in a Tampa 2, Double Switch, or other two-deep safety defenses.
To be successful in these two-deep schemes, teams must stop the run first. Consequently, they faced a lot of third-and-long situations. This is when defensive ends like Taylor, Allen, and Abraham feasted on opposing teams’ quarterbacks. Once the dirty work had been done on first and second down, they were paid to get to the quarterback on third down.
Not many in NFL history were better at getting to the quarterback than Taylor. Though he wasn’t a dominant force against the run, he held his own. But his real talent was rushing the passer. Taylor was built more like a basketball player who spent extra time in the weight room, than other Hall of Fame defensive ends like Reggie White or Kevin Greene. Not only was he quick and relentless, but he used his long arms as leverage to get around, or through, the offensive tackles.
Taylor also had great endurance. He was just as quick off the ball on the first possession as he was on the last. As the heat of South Florida wore down the majority of tackles Taylor faced, the fourth quarter was his time to shine.
Some athletes don’t know how to rise to the occasion when it really counts. Similar to his friend Michael Jordan (Taylor was one of the few "Jordan” athletes), Taylor had an ability to play his best at crunch time. When the Dolphins needed one final stop to seal the game, Taylor regularly came through with a key hurry, sack, forced fumble, or his specialty: the sack/forced fumble/recovered fumble/return for a touchdown. He is seventh all-time in sacks but holds the NFL record for touchdowns by a defensive lineman with nine scores. No doubt, Taylor was a playmaker.
As the scout-team quarterback on those Dolphins teams, I was lucky to compete against that defense. The windows, if there were any, were tight. Every throw was contested. Taylor made mincemeat of our backup linemen, but always ran past me, allowing me to still attempt my passes. If he would have grabbed me, which he could have done hundreds of times, the players and coaches wouldn’t have gotten to see if the rest of our defense could make a play on the ball, or if their third-string quarterback had any sort of accuracy. Taylor was such a good team player that he allowed others around him to improve as well.
Congratulations to the best Dolphins player to wear the aqua and orange since the retirement of Dan Marino. Taylor was an unbelievable talent with the competitive drive to be the very best. He will be forever recognized in Canton as one of the greatest to ever wear the NFL shield. I wanted to make sure that those who didn’t follow the Dolphins during his tenure know it was a team effort on defense. I have no doubt Taylor will spend a lot of time in his speech passing out praise to Thomas, Seau, Surtain, Madison, Bowens, Chester, Ogunleye, and the others on those defenses. Football is the greatest team game in the world, and Taylor is one of the all-time great players as well as one of my all-time favorite teammates.
Cheers!