Sean Taylor doesn't want to be a skin? WTF?

[SmootSmack]

Originally Posted by Drkstar

I will just say this.... Peter King knows more then you.

First off, I could be really anal and say it should be "than" not "then" but I won't do that

Secondly, what's with this Peter King fascination? At the end of the day, he's just another human being with opinions a.ka. "things I think I think". Along with the Sean Taylor scenario, he thinks he thinks (how does someone think they think anyway? don't you just think?) that Jacksonville and Seattle will play in the Super Bowl (I personally think they could make the conference finals) and that Darnell Dockett will win defensive rookie of the year honors. Does that mean it's going to happen because King thinks it? That's his opinion, he's entitled to it and others are entitled to challenge and question it. But, that doesn't mean King knows more than everybody else. What if John Clayton comes out and says "Taylor is thrilled to be a Redskin" What then? Isn't Clayton as qualified if not more so?

Besides, what was even the point of what King was writing? "I think Taylor isn't happy but it's not a big deal because Gibbs will work it out" Is that even a story?

[JoeRedskin]

That's a bit harsh Drkstar. If you want to defer and bow to the great Peter King, go ahead. I read his stuff on a regular basis and, while mostly informed, he will, on more than occasion, speculate and repeat rumour. Yes, he talks to folks on the inside, but that doesn't mean he always gets the facts right. If a rumour is interesting and backed by a decent source, he'll write it. I long ago learned that rumour ain't fact and until I hear it from the real source, Taylor, I think the statement is suspect.

Guess that makes me a nimwit.

By the way, I thought BrudLee's juxtaposition of other quotes from the same article was nothing more than a way for people who actually follow the game to see the speculative nature of the Taylor quote. If you think PK is inerrant, place your bet now on the Jacksonville - Seattle SB. Let me know how it works out for you.

[offiss]

I find it hard to believe that taylor doesn't want to be a skin, I saw interview's heading up to the draft, and he said he would love to be a skin, portis who is his friend, do think he would have kept telling all the coaches to draft Taylor if he didn't want to be here? I seriously doubt it! The player fired his agent, and it sound's like king is trying to out think the situation, with william's as a D-coordinator ready to put him in every possible position to become a star, and he doesn't want that, as well an opportunity to play for a hall of fame coach? I just don't see the validity to king's story.

[SKINSnCANES]

We all saw what happened when I player doesnt want to play for a team, they speak out against that team. And we've all seen the Sean Taylor interviews. If Sean Taylor didnt want to be hear he would have said something already and not been excited to get to mini camp and have a great press conference. The fact that he even went to minicamp says a lot about him wanting to be here. Unless for some reason you think that by him going to camp it made him realize he didnt want to be a skin. Mabye JoeC can comment about that more, having seen him at camp. But it all seemed positive to me.

[skinsfanthru&thru]

i hope this is all bs cuz the last thing this team needs is another contract problem with one of the keys to our defense's success.

[JWsleep]

This is all very weird. The only thing we know for sure is that Taylor fired Rosenhaus. Now could the source for King be said Rosenhaus?

Whatever it is, it is wierd that Taylor fired his agent. Until we know who the new agent is, and until we see how things progress with a contract, it's all speculation.

I will not rest easy until Taylor is under contract. Even the most team-oriented players get weird when the contract stuff is going on. And add ego-stroking, money-hungry agents into the mix, and anything can happen. :confused-

[Hogskin]

DRKSTAR, wow, that hostility was way, way over the line (in addition to being totally unjustified). Sure, King makes a lot of astute observations. But he also makes a lot of ridiculous ones. Just because this guy is a writer, does not make him a member of MENSA, anyhow. All these guys do is listen to stuff, assess it for reliability, and decide which of it to report. If it is a slow day, they definitely stretch the line on that.

Now as far as INTELLIGENCE goes (I'm going on a tangent here), don't count on a lot of that from many of these writers. I have not checked out King indepth, but some of the others have a horrible track record when it come to prognosticating and projecting player performances. Try going back to at the end of a season and looking at articles these guys wrote at the outset. Priscoe, for example, is so far off it is laughable. You would do MUCH better throwing darts than heeding his projections. So the bottom line is, don't automatically give these guys credibility just because they learned to write, and convinced someone to pay them to do it. A very few of them are very good.

John Shaffer
National Fantasy Sports Leagues, Inc.
Home of the "Best Game In Town" since 1990

[hi-jinx]

I have to say it is odd that the guy would drop his agent between the time of the draft and his first signing. I can't remeber that happing with a top 10 pick. As far as King goes he does seem to have a ton of contacts in the NFL and people talk to him. Busting his balls over his superbowl picks is silly. The superbowl is 8 months away and not even one game has been played. I am sure he only puts that in because he get 100 or so emails about who he thinks will win this year.


OH and BTW anyone know if Taylor found an agent? If its a Postonthat isn't a good sign.

[saden1]

Watch out now, smootsmack is on the loose and he's a super dooper moderator.

Peter King is an idiot. He makes a living writing...that in itself should tell you something.

[Phinehas]

Also, don't forget that the writer's main goal is to entertain. Sometimes to do so, they may opt for the provocative over the likely truth.

In addition, I've found a lot of the posters here on TheWarpath.net to be pretty informed and insightful. If you were listening to all of the sportswriters, you probably thought the Redskins were going to go with Winslow in the draft, but if you were a frequent visitor here, you were expecting them to pick Taylor. To be honest, notwithstanding the few immature posters that pass through, I'd put up the coverage and discussion you find here against just about any single sportswriter out there.

--Phin

[Paintrain]

I wasn't going to go here, but I worked with Peter King at CNNSI (when it was still around) and he was a story confirmer, but didn't break many stories. Pat Kirwan got much better information and got it faster. King has some contacts because he's been in the league forever, but they are mostly writers, not front office types or players. If King is 'breaking' a story such as this one, it's because someone who heard it from someone told him, not that he actually spoke to a principal player. If this is splashed all over the Post or Times or Miami Herald tomorrow then I'd give it a little bit of credence, but until then, I won't. Also, if there was something to it, don't you think one of the ESPN guys would also have a blurb on ESPN.com? Just something to think about.

[joecrisp]

Originally Posted by BleedBurgundy

"6. I think I'm hearing ominous signs out of Washington that first-round pick Sean Taylor does not want to be a Redskin. But I wouldn't expect Joe Gibbs to be too worried. He'll figure this one out."

Peter King, MMQB

What is this founded on? Joe Crisp, have you heard anything to back this up?

I haven't heard anything remotely like that-- but what do I know, right? I'm all the way down here in Richmond, VA and the great Peter King is right there in Ashburn-- wait... oh, that's right, Peter King does his speculating from Upper Montclair, NJ-- the oracle of all NFL and Redskins knowledge.

Let's look at the way this speculation is phrased-- and it is speculation until you have quotes from the principal parties to back it up-- "I think I'm hearing ominous signs..."

Okay, what the hell does that mean?

Did someone tell him, "Sean Taylor doesn't want to be a Redskin"?

Or did someone tell him, "you know, Sean Taylor didn't look all that upbeat during minicamp... he seemed a little disenchanted... and now with this whole agent-firing thing...he doesn't seem like a happy camper"?

Which sounds more plausible:

After one three-day minicamp, Sean Taylor confided in someone close to him that he doesn't want to be a Redskin, and then that someone ran off and told a prominent sportswriter like Peter King?

Or an observer-- perhaps another member of the media, maybe even a team employee-- at the minicamp noticed that Sean Taylor seemed rather sullen and unenthused in the face of the media throng that showed up to scrutinize his first practices as a Redskin, that observer casually mentioned it to King, and King-- having little to write about during the NFL's painfully slow news period between the post-draft minicamps and the June 1st cap cuts-- decides to run with it and do a little recreational speculating?

I'll go with the latter. I've read King's stuff for years, and while he's a great writer when he sticks to the facts and writes about things he actually witnessed firsthand or heard during an interview, I wouldn't lend any more creedence to his speculation than that from any of the countless rumormill websites that allege to have their own "reliable sources"-- especially when he doesn't even go into detail about these "ominous signs" or quote any sources that led to him drawing such conclusions-- or "things he thinks he thinks"-- as he likes to call them in his MMQB column.

That particular part of King's SI column is mostly devoted-- as the name of the section would indicate-- to idle thoughts and ramblings about whatever King happens to be cogitating on at the moment. I think sometimes he gets a little carried away with some of his conjecture-- as his Seattle-Jacksonville Super Bowl vision would clearly suggest. I think his comments about Taylor should be taken for how they were offered-- with very little support for belief, other than blind faith in the idea that what King deems worthy of printing is worthy of acceptance as fact.

Here's what I took away from minicamp regarding Sean Taylor: he's a quiet subdued, easy-going kid that didn't seem all that comfortable with the attention he had drawn to the Redskins' second minicamp. He didn't smile a lot around the press, he didn't look overly excited to be there talking to them, and he politely said as little as possible in answering their questions. But he did say all the right things during his press conference, he seemed to be getting along just fine with his teammates during practice-- even Ife Ohalete, whose job Taylor is ostensibly there to take-- and overall he seemed to be enjoying his first experiences as an NFL player.

So at least outwardly, there was nothing to indicate that Taylor was unhappy to be a Redskin, per se. There was nothing said amongst the media that would indicate there were any problems brewing beneath the surface. But I can see how an observer might misinterpret Taylor's aloof demeanor as an omen of general unhappiness or disenchantment with being a Redskin, and not just a sign that maybe he wasn't all that comfortable with having to face a crowd of reporters after his first practice as a pro. If someone didn't know that Taylor is generally reserved in his interactions with the media, they might easily speculate that he wasn't happy or didn't want to be a Redskin. Factor in the surprising termination of his relationship with agent Drew Rosenhaus-- who is known to work fluidly with the Redskins front office-- and it wouldn't be a dramatic leap of faith to assert that Taylor has a problem with the Redskins.

Peter King is a well-respected journalist, yes. But simply because he has more accolades than a lot of other journalists doesn't mean his speculation should be lent any more substance than what he gives it through citation of sources with primary knowledge of the facts. He provides none here, and therefore leaves it up to his readers to decide whether or not to believe it. Given what I saw and heard at Redskins Park, and knowing that Peter King wasn't at Redskins Park and probably is relying on secondhand or even third- or fourth-hand info, I would say that he's just stirring the pot for the sake of stirring the pot-- that's what guys like Peter King do, and that's why they get paid the big bucks.

[offiss]

Originally Posted by joecrisp

I haven't heard anything remotely like that-- but what do I know, right? I'm all the way down here in Richmond, VA and the great Peter King is right there in Ashburn-- wait... oh, that's right, Peter King does his speculating from Upper Montclair, NJ-- the oracle of all NFL and Redskins knowledge.

Let's look at the way this speculation is phrased-- and it is speculation until you have quotes from the principal parties to back it up-- "I think I'm hearing ominous signs..."

Okay, what the hell does that mean?

Did someone tell him, "Sean Taylor doesn't want to be a Redskin"?

Or did someone tell him, "you know, Sean Taylor didn't look all that upbeat during minicamp... he seemed a little disenchanted... and now with this whole agent-firing thing...he doesn't seem like a happy camper"?

Which sounds more plausible:

After one three-day minicamp, Sean Taylor confided in someone close to him that he doesn't want to be a Redskin, and then that someone ran off and told a prominent sportswriter like Peter King?

Or an observer-- perhaps another member of the media, maybe even a team employee-- at the minicamp noticed that Sean Taylor seemed rather sullen and unenthused in the face of the media throng that showed up to scrutinize his first practices as a Redskin, that observer casually mentioned it to King, and King-- having little to write about during the NFL's painfully slow news period between the post-draft minicamps and the June 1st cap cuts-- decides to run with it and do a little recreational speculating?

I'll go with the latter. I've read King's stuff for years, and while he's a great writer when he sticks to the facts and writes about things he actually witnessed firsthand or heard during an interview, I wouldn't lend any more creedence to his speculation than that from any of the countless rumormill websites that allege to have their own "reliable sources"-- especially when he doesn't even go into detail about these "ominous signs" or quote any sources that led to him drawing such conclusions-- or "things he thinks he thinks"-- as he likes to call them in his MMQB column.

That particular part of King's SI column is mostly devoted-- as the name of the section would indicate-- to idle thoughts and ramblings about whatever King happens to be cogitating on at the moment. I think sometimes he gets a little carried away with some of his conjecture-- as his Seattle-Jacksonville Super Bowl vision would clearly suggest. I think his comments about Taylor should be taken for how they were offered-- with very little support for belief, other than blind faith in the idea that what King deems worthy of printing is worthy of acceptance as fact.

Here's what I took away from minicamp regarding Sean Taylor: he's a quiet subdued, easy-going kid that didn't seem all that comfortable with the attention he had drawn to the Redskins' second minicamp. He didn't smile a lot around the press, he didn't look overly excited to be there talking to them, and he politely said as little as possible in answering their questions. But he did say all the right things during his press conference, he seemed to be getting along just fine with his teammates during practice-- even Ife Ohalete, whose job Taylor is ostensibly there to take-- and overall he seemed to be enjoying his first experiences as an NFL player.

So at least outwardly, there was nothing to indicate that Taylor was unhappy to be a Redskin, per se. There was nothing said amongst the media that would indicate there were any problems brewing beneath the surface. But I can see how an observer might misinterpret Taylor's aloof demeanor as an omen of general unhappiness or disenchantment with being a Redskin, and not just a sign that maybe he wasn't all that comfortable with having to face a crowd of reporters after his first practice as a pro. If someone didn't know that Taylor is generally reserved in his interactions with the media, they might easily speculate that he wasn't happy or didn't want to be a Redskin. Factor in the surprising termination of his relationship with agent Drew Rosenhaus-- who is known to work fluidly with the Redskins front office-- and it wouldn't be a dramatic leap of faith to assert that Taylor has a problem with the Redskins.

Peter King is a well-respected journalist, yes. But simply because he has more accolades than a lot of other journalists doesn't mean his speculation should be lent any more substance than what he gives it through citation of sources with primary knowledge of the facts. He provides none here, and therefore leaves it up to his readers to decide whether or not to believe it. Given what I saw and heard at Redskins Park, and knowing that Peter King wasn't at Redskins Park and probably is relying on secondhand or even third- or fourth-hand info, I would say that he's just stirring the pot for the sake of stirring the pot-- that's what guys like Peter King do, and that's why they get paid the big bucks.

Upper monclair AAAAA! I am the foremost authority on redskin's football in northern jersey, I also called the taylor pick the day I found out we had the #5 pick, I bet King can't handle being second rate around these part's, and is doing everything he can to top me, SORRY KING AIN'T HAPPENING!

P.S. King does post on this site, he goes by the name of Drkstar.

[MTK]

Just seems like King is trying to drum up some controversy in this slow time for news. I really wouldn't take it too seriously.

I agree with JC, of course he got to see Taylor up close and I'm just going on what I've read and seen from clips on the net, etc., but Taylor just seems like a really reserved and easy going kinda kid that probably isn't totally comfortable or adjusted to the NFL media yet. One could probably speculate that he isn't happy, when in reality it's just his personality.

[EEich]

I agree that the King article is probably a load of BS... but doesn't this sound possible?

Taylor to agent: "Make sure I don't end up in Washington or your fired." Two days after draft, agent is fired.

I would really hate this to be the case, and am very confident that Gibbs will make it work.