Jason Taylor ... Again

If it dragged on long enough, I knew the Jason Taylor drama would dance its way into Eagles Nation.

Has a high profile player come on the market in recent memory that the Eagles HAVEN'T been said to have expressed interest in? The lesson of the New York Giants' Super Bowl win was that you can never have too many pass rushers. Taylor, 34 on Sept. 1, doesn't fit into a long-term rebuilding picture in Miami. But the Dolphins are unlikely to just unceremoniously dump a six-time Pro Bowl defensive end, who had 11 sacks last season, and hasn't missed a game since 1999.

When the Taylor-Miami schism was first detected, the word from NovaCare was that the Eagles weren't all that interested, given what Miami would probably want, and given Taylor's age. There's no indication that dynamic has changed. If Taylor could be had for a third- or fourth-round draft choice, there are very few teams in the NFL that wouldn't be interested. Eagles GM Tom Heckert worked for the Dolphins back when Taylor was drafted, and they apparently know each other pretty well.

Would I trade disgruntled cornerback Lito Sheppard for Taylor? Well, no, given the respective differences in age -- Sheppard turned 27 in April -- and the fact that Taylor said over the weekend that he wants to play just one more season.

I don't think there's any reason to think a Taylor trade to the Birds is imminent, which, of course, hasn't stopped the discussion thread on the Eagles' Web site message board from logging 353 comments as of a little before noon Monday.

This being Philadelphia, the discussion on the 18 pages of the thread sometimes veers onto the topic of whether appearing on "Dancing With the Stars" necessarily means you're gay. One poster opines that Taylor isn't gay, he's just a "GQ guy." And this again being Philadelphia, a puzzled poster promptly asks what "GQ" means.

Note to that fellow: Follow the link. It will help you coordinate your sweatpants with your tank top.

Meanwhile, Yahoo's Jason Cole dropped in on the Eagles' rookie camp last week and penned a piece on rookie wideout DeSean Jackson that hits most of the familiar notes. The most interesting assertion is that while Cole was watching, Jackson consistently lined up last for individual drills.

Your Eagletarian wasn't scrutinizing the individual drills at rookie camp quite that closely.(In fact, here's an excerpt from my notes that day: "That cloud overhead is shaped almost exactly like Brent Celek's new hairdo ... Boy, the jets are landing at really close intervals today at Philly International ... If I were Peter King, I could write a bunch of stuff about the details of the Pattison Ave. repaving and how it has hindered my NovaCare ingress and egress ... wonder how much ice cream would fit into a traffic cone? ... Whether Lito Sheppard shows up Tuesday for full-team OTAs could be the key to telling us how this whole thing is going to be -- a nonstory, ultimately, or a continuing, distracting drama ... Speaking of keys, should I buy the new Black Keys album? Danger Mouse is the producer. I like the Black Keys. I like Danger Mouse. (By the way, Gnarls Barkley is at the Festival Pier this coming Saturday.) Never pictured them together, though. But who would have predicted Alison Krauss and Robert Plant? That turned out well."

Nope, nothing in there about the order of the WRs in individual drills. This last-in-line perception dogged Jackson going into the draft; in the May 21 Daily News story about him, he said this:

"All the things people said [going into the draft] - I'm not the first [in line in drills], I don't work hard, I don't lift weights, I'm not a team player, I honestly don't know where all that comes from . . . It is what it is, negative things got out, I had to pay for it. If that means going from the first round to the second round . . . I'm into the NFL, everything else I've got to leave behind. I've got to start a clean page here with the Eagles.

"One of the biggest things I learned with Jerry Rice was off-the-field . . . leaving good impressions on people, talk to everybody in a room, not just shake a couple hands here and there, how to handle training camp, you got to get into the playbook, work hard. There's going to be a big difference.''

For the record, my impression is that the Eagles are very happy with Jackson so far. Whatever spot he takes in line, he seems to be giving effort. I wouldn't trade him for Jason Taylor, either.