I feel obligated...

I am not a huge contributor to the site, but Sean Taylor was by far my favorite player so I feel obligated to honor him in some fashion.

I remember the 2004 draft very well. I was still in college and had really only been an avid fan for a few years. I grew up with parents who were both from Texas, so I was raised knowing nothing but the Cowboys. Somewhere in highschool, the Boys lost their luster for me. It was after I saw the way they treated Jimmy Johnson and Emmitt Smith - and to a lesser extent Aikman and Irvin, that I began to pay more attention to the Skins. I loved them...I loved their players, I loved the prestige that came with the name...I loved everything about the team.

My close group of friends followed the Skins closely year by year. 2000 sealed the deal for all of us when we had the second and fourth picks in the draft...we were so excited about LaVar Arrington from watching highlights of the LaVar leap at Penn State. Samuels was a great pick, just not as pretty as LaVar. Nevertheless, 2000 was the first draft we watched...and we were hooked. There was excitement in the following years, and it was always followed by extreme disappointment. Rod Gardner, Patrick Ramsey, Taylor Jacobs...we spent hours justifying why these players would be the sure fire greatest players ever at their position but we all knew they were all hit or miss picks. Turns out they were all misses.

We didnt even have that many picks in 2004...I think we had 4, so I didnt even care about the draft. I knew about the offensive guys coming out from watching college ball. You always know about the offensive guys so I was hoping that somehow Larry Fitzgerald would fall to us at 5. After that I didnt care. That was until my buddy called me about a week before the draft and wanted to talk Skins. He'd gone through all the mock drafts and told me there was no way Fitzgerald was falling to us. "Go check out the safety from Miami, Taylor, thats who everyone is saying we are gonna get...hes pretty nasty." I honestly hadnt seen much of him...I heard the name but that was about it.I found some draft preview videos of him and I watched three minutes of this kid absolutely destroying opposing players at Miami. This was the meanest mf I had ever seen. There was some kind of evil in this guy. 3 minutes and I was sold. As stupid as it sounds, I honestly prayed that we would pick him, if Larry was there or not. We did...and just like every year we sat and justified why he would be the sure fire greatest player ever at his position, except this year was different because part of us actually believed it could be possible. So me and my buddies did what we always did after a perceived Redskin's success, we got shit canned and talked about the perceived Redskins success until we fell asleep. I remember all of us deciding that since we really didnt have a favorite player anymore because LaVar was dragging ass that Sean Taylor was our guy.

We watched him week after week just murdering people on the field. We would cringe because he was so unnecessarily brutal with his hits - like his life depended on making the other guy hurt. Every hit was as bad, as painful as he could possibly make it. It didnt take long for guys to notice either. I went to the Skins-Eagles game and saw something I had never seen before. McNabb throws a beautiful deep ball to a seemingly wide open Todd Pinkston when all of the sudden you see this freak of a human fly across the field. There was no big hit, just a receiver who values the use of his limbs enough to endure endless heckling from unforgiving Philly fan and countless mentions on Redskins blogs all over the internet to pull his arms in and avoid the hit. I still say it was the right move by Todd...because that wasnt just a man coming after you...it was a half man, half beast - a Meast. Thats just the way he was on the field. I dont see anything wrong with him destroying people when he didnt have to, no problem with him leveling a punter in a glorified two hand touch game. He played the game EXACTLY the way a defender is supposed to play. These guys get payed millions to do whatever it takes to get that football, defenders especially get paid to punish those with the ball in order to keep them out of the end zone, and he is one of the few players who did just that. I never watched a game where I didnt see him put everything he had into every step he took, every hit he laid. Some people learn the game and some people were born to play. Sean Taylor was the latter. Im sick of hearing about his less than perfect past. What's done is done. As a follower of Jesus, I know that the Bible says that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. What I do know about Sean Taylor is that when he died, his closest friends, his coaches, anyone who knew him spoke passionately about his new life as a father...about his flawless record as a loyal friend. It is truly sad from a football standpoint that we lost such a fantastic player. He was exciting to watch week in and week out. Biased as I may be, I stand by my slurred words in my buddies basement - I think he had a chance to be the best ever. I'm sorry that I will never see the day where we can sit around look back at his career and say "I told you so." From another standpoint, and more importantly, I mourn for his family, his fiance, his daughter. May the Lord be with you. Rest In Peace #21, my favorite player.