Washington Post’s Leonard Shapiro writes:
It was only a few months after he was drafted, when we got something of an inkling of what sort of young man the Redskins were selecting out of the University of Miami with the fifth overall selection in 2004.
For one, Taylor brazenly skipped the rookie symposium he was required to attend his first year, and was fined accordingly by the NFL. You also can look at the timeline of his professional life printed on this web site or in the newspaper and draw your own preliminary conclusions.
Over the first few years Taylor was in the league, he bounced from one scrape to another, blowing off the symposium, disrespecting Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs by not showing up for mandatory offseason workouts and never calling to explain why, running afoul of the law in a widely reported shooting incident in South Florida and very nearly going to jail.
On the field, Taylor often was a thoroughly undisciplined player who loved to make bold statements with vicious and often dangerous hits that occasionally got him tossed from games. Clearly, he seemed to embrace the thug image on and off the field, and the fact that he rarely spoke to members of the media only enhanced his reputation as a moody, enigmatic athlete we hardly ever got to know.
