"My heart has always been in Miami and so I'm truly excited to call myself a Dolphin once again. I was presented with a number of different opportunities, but in the end the combination of this being the best situation for my family, my love for this community and my tremendous loyalty to a great organization made this an easy decision ." - Jason Taylor in a statement released yesterday.

The Return of the King. The Prodigal Son returns. You can come home again. Carry on wayward son. There'll be peace when you are done. Let's see, what other bad clichés can I use? That's 4 too many? OK.

Jason Taylor signed a one year contract with the Dolphins yesterday for $1.1 million, plus incentives.  The Patriots tried to court him. The Jets [turn your head and spit when you read that] wanted him.  But in the end, the Dolphins wanted him and he wanted the Dolphins. So here he is.

Jason can now finish out his career as a Dolphin. He is king of the Dolphins sack record with 117 and also holds the fumble returns for touchdowns record, interceptions by a defensive lineman record for the team, and a few others.  He has been to the Pro Bowl six times and was used well enough by Nick Saban [turn your head again and spit when you read that] to be Defensive Player of the Year while Saban was carpet bagging in Florida. Now he has a chance to add to all of those stats. In hindsight, you could probably see this coming when the Dolphins didn't draft a pass rusher/outside line backer in the first three rounds. They knew if none of the rookies impressed them enough, they could ask Taylor to join them.

According to the Herald's Armando Salguero, Taylor will be used as a situational player as opposed to an every down player.  Limiting his play will help keep him fresh and ready to sack and harass throughout the season and keep opposing QBs miserable. See his post here.

The main potential downsides to signing Jason Taylor are his age and his impact on other players.  He is old in NFL years and he could be a little slower and more prone to injury.  And, as Coach Sparano said, signing Taylor will take away from younger players time on-field and slow their development.

The main benefit of having Jason Taylor, aside from the proven ability and leadership he brings, is that signing him makes it harder for opposing offenses to prepare for the Dolphins. Channing Crowder mentioned on WQAM that there were a number of packages they didn't run last year because they didn't have somebody like Taylor. Last year, opposing offenses mainly had to account for Joey Porter.  Take Joey out of the play and the main pass rushing threat was gone. Simple and effective. No longer.

Now other teams will have to spend valuable time making sure their offense accounts for Taylor's presence on every play. And Joey Porter's. Are they on the field? If so, where? Will they rush or drop back into coverage? Instead of "Where's Waldo?", it will be "Where's Jason and/or Joey?" Referring to Pat White, Jimmy Johnson mentioned in a WQAM interview that adding a play takes only 30 minutes but takes all day for opponents to plan against. "30 minutes" and "all day" may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the more time teams spend on planning for Jason and Joey, the less time there is available for the rest of the defense.

This signing should help the other pass rushers fly under the radar, what I like to think of as the "Wes Welker Effect." It seemed that when Wes was playing for the Dolphins and now for the Patriots, the opponents main game plan for him was "Oh yeah, watch out for that Wes guy too. He seems to catch passes." While other teams focused on the primary receivers, Wes was quietly leading the team in receptions. With teams concentrating on Joey and Jason, the other guys will be afterthoughts and hopefully have more play-making opportunities.

Note to other pass rushers: There will probably be one less of you making the team. Those of you that do make the cut will have less playing time than you would have had a couple of days ago. So you better develop as fast as you can. On the extremely thin chance any of you are reading this, shut off your computer and get to work. Go study the play book or work out or go pick the mind of a veteran or two.  Or something. But first make sure to tell your competition, the other pass rushers not named Joey or Jason, to read this article and to spend lots of time checking out other news articles. Maybe have a beer or two while they surf the net. After all, your main job right now is to make sure you're one of the guys wearing an NFL uniform come September, not saying "You want fries with that?"

From the Sun-Sentinel: