Some thoughts on recent news surrounding two Dolphins legends.

First, we start with Jason Taylor, the 15-year veteran and the last link to those very good defenses built by Jimmy Johnson in the late 1990s and the early part of the century.

Taylor was a third-round pick out of Akron who looked too skinny to be a defensive force, but he became -- along with brother-in-law Zach Thomas -- the face of the Dolphins defense during the end of the Marino years and the beginning of the Dave Wannstedt regime.

His last game will be this Sunday, fittingly against a Jets team that for many years was his tormentor, until he joined them last season and made his deepest playoff run.

J.T. ranks sixth all-time with 139.5 sacks, made six Pro Bowls, and his six fumble returns for touchdowns are the most in NFL history.

He was the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year in 2006, when he led the league with 13.5 sacks.

He may be the only slam-dunk Hall-of-Fame player from the post-Don Shula years so far, even moreso than Thomas, who was plagued by injuries at the end of his career, and had the misfortune of playing at the same time as future first-ballot Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis.

I'll remember Taylor for his big games against Tom Brady and the Patriots, and his interception return for a TD that helped seal a win over the then-undefeated Bears in their last Super Bowl season -- but not for his Dancing With the Stars stint or his one year with the miserable Jets.

I'm sure we haven't seen the last of Taylor, who said he wanted to be an actor when his playing days were over with. I could also see him go the route so many do in retirement and latch on to a network as a broadcaster.

Then we come to Dan Marino, whose last single-season record of most passing yards finally fell Monday night to Drew Brees.

Going into the game, there was a lot of talk nationally about how Brees' mark should have an asterisk next to it considering the fact the rules changes enacted in recent years have made passing easier than ever before, not to mention it took Brees a whopping 100 more pass attempts to break the record than Marino needed to set it.

And in the wake of Brees getting the record, with a meaningless TD pass when his team was already ahead 38-16 against Atlanta, there were charges his team had unnecessarily run up the score just to pass Marino.

I think both assessments are right, but where was this outcry when Peyton Manning and then Tom Brady eclipsed Marino's TD mark just three seasons apart?

Like Brees, both were left in games far longer than they should have been to pad their TD totals, a point I made in an earlier post almost two years ago. And like Brees, both set the record after the rule was passed limiting a defensive back's contact with a receiver. Add to it the new rules that make touching a quarterback in the wrong place or a second too late into a personal foul, and the game is now easier than ever before for signal-callers.

I guess since they were Manning and Brady, they largely got a pass in the national media, though some solitary souls -- like FOX Sports' Jason Whitlock -- correctly pointed this out.

Like I wrote before, the quarterbacks in this era should only be compared to each other, and not the likes of Marino, Joe Montana and John Elway. They played under a different set of rules, just as Johnny Unitas did before Marino and Elway, so their achievements should not be diminished by today's passing frenzy.

No matter what the numbers say, to me Marino is still the single-season record-holder, just as I still view Henry Aaron as the all-time home run king -- not a 'roided-up Barry Bonds who illegitimately set that record. (How Bud Selig has never attached an asterisk to that mark is beyond me; everyone knows what Bonds did, and he was even convicted in court of lying about it). Of course, as I wrote before, its an apples-to-oranges comparison, because Brees set his record thanks to rules changes, not by using performance-enhancing drugs as Bonds did, but in the end, both records were set artificially.

Marino's marks may be history, but it says a lot he achieved those records in a single season with stricter rules in place and in a tougher era.