Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
It’s the game that never ends
Dolphins Hall of Famer Taylor makes fatherhood top priority amid busy schedule
The St. Thomas Aquinas safety was watching video of his big interception in a Class 7A playoff game. He had just snatched the ball out of the air in his team’s end zone, sprinted back up the field 102 yards for a touchdown.
But Isaiah Taylor wasn’t paying attention to himself sprinting toward the end zone. “I see my dad,” he said, “side-by-side, sprinting down the sideline with me.”
His dad is Pro Football Hall Jason Taylor.
It was exactly the type of unforgettable moment the Miami Dolphins great envisioned when he joined the Raiders coaching staff as a defensive line coordinator in 2017, a job he took partly to spend more time with his sons.
“I think he enjoys being a dad,” said Jason’s mother, Georgia Taylor. “More than he did playing ball.”
While Jason Taylor’s NFL career came to its inevitable end — he played 233 games at defensive end and outside linebacker — he has an infinite career as a father to his three kids. He’s in this game forever and, just as it
was in the NFL, he’s in it to win.
“I do everything with them, I do everything for them,” he said.
A dizzying array of daily tasks means Jason is busier in retirement than he was as a player. So he constantly searches for ways to spend more time with all of his kids — Isaiah, a 5-11, 195-pound senior at St. Thomas who will play football at Arizona next year; Mason, a 6-4, 230-pound junior tight end at St. Thomas who will be a hot recruit; and Zoë, a freshman volleyball player, also for the Raiders.
That search for time might get more intense in the summer.
Jason, 46, and his wife, Monica, are expecting a child in August, their first together. Isaiah, Mason and Zoë are Jason’s children from his marriage to Katina, the sister of the former Dolphins All Pro linebacker Zach Thomas, .
Jason and Monica were married at a Plantation courthouse on Aug. 18, after COVID19 caused several postponements to their planned 150-person wedding on Miami Beach.
Monica, a former Dolphins cheerleader, found out she was pregnant on Thanksgiving.
“Jason’s fatherhood will continue,” she said. So will the demands on his time. Jason, who played 13 of his 15 NFL seasons for the Miami Dolphins, has kept a relatively low profile since his 2017 induction into the Hall of Fame. But he hasn’t been hard to find. He’s on the sideline as defensive coordinator for St. Thomas, the two-time defending 7A state champions and one of the nation’s top programs. He’s on TV, hawking products for Invicta watches and Medic Therapeutics on ShopHQ. He’s on radio, serving as an analyst for Miami Dolphins games in the booth alongside ex-Dolphins Joe Rose and Jimmy Cefalo. And he’s leading the Jason Taylor Foundation, which does lots of work helping children.
But the two hats he wears most proudly are father, and father-to-be.
Sometimes he’ll sit in Zoë’s room “watching those silly, stupid TikTok things she watches,” he says with a smile.
Other times he’ll join Isaiah and Mason, “watching them play a video game as they sit there and talk trash.”
Such father-child moments are why Isaiah’s interception was even more special off the field.
Firstly, there was the emotional embrace on the sideline between father and son that followed Isaiah’s spirited sprint down the sideline.
Everybody saw that, including Rose and many of Jason’s other friends.
“We all gave him a hard time,” Rose said. “He laughed. He’s running down the sideline and going nuts. He went from coach to father on that return.”
Retirement from the NFL, but not much else
Jason, who retired after the 2011 NFL season, puts in a lot of hours among his many jobs. “In the fall,” he said, “you don’t see me.” That’s when Jason is spending hours each weekday morning poring over video of the team’s upcoming opponents. After that, it’s lunch, and then time for practice.
On Fridays after games, he’ll finish around midnight or 1 a.m., and be back at St. Thomas at 7 a.m. for the Saturday morning coaches meeting. This year, Jason might also travel on Saturday morning to watch Isaiah’s college game, and travel Sunday morning to be somewhere, either at home or the road, for the Dolphins radio broadcast.
Nowadays, Jason and Monica also must tend to their ShopHQ TV duties, demonstrating and discussing products.
Jason has become an expert pitchman at everything from a vibrating fitness platform to compression sleeves and medical masks. He said it’s easier because they’re products he uses every day.
“I’m not selling women’s shoes,” he cracked.
As for coaching Isaiah and Mason, sure, sometimes Jason the father intersects with Jason the coach. But he figures he does OK separating the roles in this labor of love, especially when it comes to discipline.
“It hasn’t been a tough line to walk for me, I don’t think,” he said before briefly morphing into hardcore-coach mode.
“Hell, I discipline everybody. I don’t discriminate; I’ll jump everybody’s ass.”
There were even days when Jason would yell at Isaiah to make a point to the team.
“I’ll apologize to you later,” Jason once told Isaiah, “but in the moment, you better take it because if you talk back, I’m going make it even worse.
“We kind of chuckle about it, and he understands.”
Making up for lost time
Despite the busy schedule and numerous titles, fatherhood remains Jason’s focus. He was there for all of his kids’ births. “It was everything to me,” Jason said. “Not growing up with my father, or knowing my father, it was one of those moments…not just with Isaiah, but really with all three of my kids.”
Monica, born and raised in Miami by her Cuban-born parents, has meshed well with Jason and the kids. Monica and Jason met in the Bahamas near the end of 2016.
Monica said Jason was shy when they first met. Before their first date he insisted on meeting her father. He had her home by midnight.
Jason proposed in 2019, at their favorite spot on the Bahamian island of Exuma.
A couple of months after their courthouse wedding, they had a 60-person ceremony at a friend’s house.
Jason Taylor’s life is full, in more ways than one. He’ll face a major challenge in balancing everything in the coming months — defensive coordinator, salesman, charitable leader, and radio analyst for the Dolphins while having one kid in college, two kids in high school, and another kid in diapers. He’ll have more jobs than ever. “But my No. 1 job,” he said, “is being a dad.”