Gibbs, Taylor’s family and his teammates, past and present, did their best to describe a player very few got to know.

Taylor had a great smile and a menacing sneer. He was extremely talented — fast and powerful — and genuinely had a chance to become one of the best safeties ever to play in the NFL.

“What got cut short here was a career that was going to go to a lot of Pro Bowls and have a lot of fun,” Gibbs said.

Taylor was having the best season of his career on the field and had stayed out of trouble off the field since the birth of his daughter, Jackie, in May 2006. He was becoming a leader, and his teammates had elected him to the players’ committee that meets regularly with Gibbs.

“I saw a real maturing process,” Gibbs said.

He wasn’t the only one to notice changes in Taylor after his daughter’s birth.

“He was kind of a wild child, like myself,” said New York Giants tight end Jeremy Shockey, who played with Taylor at the University of Miami and worked out with him in the offseason. “But life changed for Sean after he had his baby girl. Fatherhood really changed him. He grew up and matured.”

Private and slow to trust anyone, Taylor rarely granted interviews. During his last known full-length interview, conducted with WTEM-AM in September, he spoke of the joy he felt when he made his daughter laugh, how he wanted to give her life experiences different from his own, and how he did not fear death.

“You can’t be scared of death,” he told the radio station. “When that time comes, it comes. ... You never see a person who has lived their life to the fullest. They sometimes feel sorry for like a child, maybe, that didn’t get a chance to do some of the things they thought that child might have had a chance to do in life. I’ve been blessed. God’s looked out for me, so, I’m happy.”

Still, Taylor, drafted No. 5 overall by the Redskins in April 2004, got off to a rocky start in the NFL.

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He had a drunken driving charge that was later dismissed. He skipped part of the NFL’s mandatory rookie symposium. He fired two agents. He didn’t like his contract. He refused to return Gibbs’ calls during the offseason. And he was fined at least seven times for late hits, uniform violations and other on-field infractions.

In 2005, he was accused of pointing a gun during a fight over all-terrain vehicles near his Miami home, a legal battle that ended a year later when he pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors and was sentenced to probation.

Recently, Taylor indeed was starting to make his past seem irrelevant. The baby helped him gain perspective, and other changes were making him a better football player.

This season, Taylor improved his diet and workout regimen and was given a new role. Instead of playing a hybrid safety position, he was a true free safety. He used speed and power to chase passes and intimidate receivers. His five interceptions tie for the lead in the NFC, even though he missed the last two games because of a sprained knee.

“You think back to how much heat he took for everything,” running back Clinton Portis said. “For missing camp, for not being around for this or that, for missing the rookie symposium. You come to the realization that all of that means nothing.”

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