“He’s My Motivator”
And Mason, who was that 6-year-old that Jason alluded to in his years-ago chat with Johnson, is now the Jets’ soon-to-be-21-year-old tight end out of LSU. And while most of the stories in 2025 will be about the son, he doesn’t begrudge the father an encore.<\/p>\n
“It doesn’t bother me at all. I love it,” Mason said. “He’s my motivator, he’s the guy I look up to, so people saying I’m in his shadow, that really doesn’t affect me. I’m doing hard work just like he did. He was lowly recruited out of high school and college, and I’ve just seen the way he’s done things and approached his business every single day, so I don’t see that as I’m in his shadows.”<\/p>\n
In 15 years, any rough edges in the Taylors’ Miami\/New York passion play have been worn away. Mason has been a South Florida guy just like his dad, living in Plantation, FL, starring at St. Thomas Aquinas HS in Fort Lauderdale, and frolicking at a few Dolphins practices back in the day just as he did at a few Jets practices in ’10. He and his father over time have become part of an NFL bicoastal family.<\/p>\n
“My dad’s a big supporter, so I hate to say it but I think he’ll love the Jets, not a lot more than the Dolphins now, but I feel like he’s a really supportive dad and we come from a really supportive family,” Mason said. “So he’s going to have Jets merch in his closet, I’m sure of it, and it’s going to be really exciting.”<\/p>\n
The excitement soon will be all about Mason, who will be “tracing in the footsteps” of Jason, who remembers he was considered “too small, too pretty” coming out of Akron as a third-rounder in 1997, as well as those of uncle Zach Thomas, another player thought to be “too small” to play middle linebacker for the Dolphins. Taylor was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2017, Thomas in ’23.<\/p>\n
“I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder my whole career,” Jason said in 2010. Now it’s the chip off the old block’s turn.<\/p>\n
“It’s an amazing opportunity for me, knowing there are no shortcuts,” Mason said. “It’s all hard work, and you’re doing that every single day because you want to be like them, pushing yourself to be the best tight end you can be. And definitely being a great teammate is a top priority as well.”<\/p>\n
The Exuberance of Youth
Mason, as a high draft choice, should remain a Jet a white longer than Jason, who returned to Miami for his final NFL season in 2011. And being that the NFL, as first-year head coach Aaron Glenn is the latest to remind us, is a young man’s game, it may be significant that the young Taylor is the fifth-youngest Jets first- or second-round selection in the past 59 drafts, or since the first NFL common draft in 1967. The list of the Jets’ youngest high draft picks since ’67:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“He’s My Motivator”And Mason, who was that 6-year-old that Jason alluded to in his years-ago chat with Johnson,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2051],"tags":[7,226,929,280,1917,255,88,2321,2097,6,8522],"class_list":{"0":"post-32498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-jets","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-jets","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-mason-taylor","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-jets","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkjets","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-randy-lange"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114469688317001380","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}