Redskins’ Portis tries to deal with Taylor’s death

Published 10:40 pm Thursday, November 29, 2007

ASHBURN, Va. — Sean Taylor’s locker has been sealed in Plexiglas. The contents haven’t been disturbed, and the stool with his name on it still sits in front.

Clinton Portis can’t bear to look at it.

“I stay out of the locker room,” Portis said. “My locker is next to his. A lot of guys will be over to the locker and looking up and seeing the picture of Sean. Seeing that locker cased up, seeing that seat sit right there, it’s like an emptiness. It’s a shock that you can’t look up and see him, and won’t look up and see him again.”

Portis and receiver Santana Moss, the two Redskins players closest to Taylor, and the coach who thought of him as a son spoke publicly Thursday for the first time since the 24-year-old safety was shot to death.

Even as the team inched closer to normalcy with a practice that was livelier than the day before and questions from reporters that actually dealt with football, the comments from Portis, Moss and assistant coach Gregg Williams reinforced how much grieving remains.

“The best way I know how to handle this situation is the way Sean would have handled it,” said Moss, who, like Taylor and Portis, attended the University of Miami. “He would have mourned for the moment that we had to mourn, but he would have went out there and laced them up, and played like no other.”

The investigation into Taylor’s death continued Thursday in Miami, where police have said they suspect Taylor was the victim of a random burglary when he was shot at his home early Monday. Taylor died the next day.

Police also are investigating a possible connection to a Nov. 17 break-in at Taylor’s home, but Taylor was such a private man that neither Moss nor Portis knew anything about the first incident.

“That’s the type of guy Sean was,” Moss said. “You’d never know what was going on with him, good or bad.”

Both said it was worth paying attention to Arizona Cardinals cornerback Antrel Rolle, who said Wednesday that he didn’t believe Taylor’s killing was a random event. Rolle said Taylor had many enemies on the streets of Miami and that “they’ve been targeting him for three years now.”

“Antrel grew up with Sean, he knows the neighborhood, he knows the people,” Portis said. “He’ll hear more conversations than you would hear or I would hear. They’re still from the same part of town. Maybe he knew something we didn’t know. It doesn’t matter if people were targeting him or not, but at the same time we need to find who did it.”

A public viewing for Taylor is scheduled Sunday in Miami, and the entire Redskins organization plans to fly to Florida to attend the funeral Monday, three days before a game against the Chicago Bears.