Bill Ingram/The Palm Beach Post

Brandon Marshall stiff-arms Jets safety Eric Smith after catching a pass in the second half of the Dolphins’ win Sunday, Jan. 1, 2012.

Jason Taylor visited the hospital a few days before Christmas with his wife and three kids. They brought a lot of toys for kids with cancer, burn victims, children with deformities. Taylor’s children didn’t want to leave, they were having so much fun playing, connecting, giving — unwrapping, in other words, Dad’s real and lasting gifts. Later that night, over prayer, his kids thanked each of the children they met by name, and damn if that didn’t just about make the tough, old football player cry. It can make you emotional, getting old. Appreciative, too.

Looking back — something he has done a lot over the last few weeks, ever since he decided this new year would mark the beginning of the end of football — Taylor realized this: All those blessings that surrounded him in that hospital, he didn’t have any of them upon arriving in Miami as a scared, skinny kid. The wife? She is the sister of Zach Thomas, his brother in more way than one. The children? All born and raised here. Everything Taylor believes in now — family, faith and football, all of it intertwined in something not unlike a huddle — has been nourished and grown here. His gratitude, his platform, everything that makes him who he is. Miami isn’t just the home of his Foundation. It is the home of his foundation.

Giving back

He attempts to give back, raising almost $3 million for poor kids, sending 35 single-parent kids to college with all expenses paid, but he knows his is a debt that’ll never really get repaid. It is something his mentor Marino taught him, one of so many things, and Marino has an entire hospital for children in his name. The most amazing part of what we are celebrating today? In what is otherwise a meaningless football game? It isn’t that, in an era of unprecedented player movement, at a time when the Dolphins have changed coaches, owners and even stadium names multiple times during Taylor’s career, South Florida got to watch Taylor grow from kid to man like parents at a graduation. No, it is the ital:kind:ital of man we have watched him grow into, someone for whom you want to cheer, after coming from a childhood background so broken and painful that he doesn’t like discussing its details and it can bring him to tears if the questions get too close.

The thing that makes Taylor feel proudest? There’s a library to go through after a decade and a half in the sport. He’s the best defender the Dolphins have ever had. He’s scored more touchdowns than anyone to ever play his position. He was the NFL’s Defensive Player Of The Year once and finished second another year. He’d be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and in the best-ever discussion, if he’d had exactly the same career in New England. But proudest?

Being Named NFL Man Of The Year for his charitable works helping giving kids opportunities, education and a path.

“It overshadows everything,” he says. “I know how much it helped me when I was a kid — that someone helped, that someone cared. This game provides you power. Impact lives. Make days. It takes five seconds. Shake a hand. Give a football. I don’t take that for granted. I can’t.”

‘i’ll be emotional’

Today should feel really good. Gratitude always does. In sports, very few get to choose their own ending, as even legends like Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno learned. For players, the uniform usually gets taken from you before you get a chance to give it back, confidence the last thing to go, the mirror the last thing to know. You know the most fun former safety John Lynch ever had playing football? It wasn’t winning a championship in Tampa, believe it or not, and it wasn’t any of the nine years he went to the Pro Bowl. It was in a preseason game, as a Patriot. You don’t remember him as a Patriot? That’s because he never played a regular-season game for New England. Bill Belichick told Lynch that he had made the team, but Lynch knew he had nothing left. So all he asked for at the end was to play the entire final exhibition game. And there he was, in the fourth quarter, playing against nobodies, blitzing on every down, ignoring the play calls and a lifetime of regimen as Belichick laughed from the sideline.

“I will be playing football as a kid again,” Taylor says of today. “It’ll be emotional. I’m going to try to hold it together the best I can.”

He has been on a snap count all year because of his age and has been allowed to sit out practices, too. But he has asked coaches to let him play every down today, and they have agreed.

“I don’t want to come out,” he says. “I want every last drop. I want to soak in every detail. I want to come out only if I’m tired.”

Jason, you aren’t going to get too tired to come out.

“Damn right I’m not,” he says.

There are things he won’t miss about football, of course. Training camps. The dirty business side of the game. And all the losing. But days like today, there is nothing to replace them in the silence of retirement.

“I’m at peace,” Taylor says. “It is an honor to go out like this in Miami.”

The honor, watching a lost and scared kid grow into a pillar of a man, has been ours.

Assistant coaches live life on the injury report.

Outside of the “out” section — where Dolphins running back Reggie Bush sits for Sunday’s game with the Jets — the injury report lists uncertainties: questionable, probable, doubtful. That’s the lot of NFL assistant coaches even more so than head coaches, especially assistant coaches on staffs such as the Dolphins, where everybody knows change is coming.

Their approach to living with job insecurity could be summed up in the words of that fictional Miami Beach resident Hyman Roth: This is the business we’ve chosen. Or, for those whose taste run less Godfather and more Super Chicken: You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

“If you don’t know what you’re getting into to begin with, then don’t be a coach,” Dolphins defensive coordinator Mike Nolan said.

Dolphins interim coach Todd Bowles, an NFL player for eight seasons and NFL coach for 12, said, “You kind of know what you’re signed up for when you come into this business. As a former player and coach for 10-plus years, all you can control is coaching your guys and make sure they’re ready to play. The decisions that you don’t make can’t affect you, so you just go ahead and coach. You’re true to yourself and you’re true to your coaching; you understand that you’ll be around somewhere.”

While Nolan said he found the changes sometimes “exciting,” he admitted, “I think it bothers you when you have children, from a family standpoint. Because that’s really who’s affected the most. But outside of that, my kids are out of the house now.

“If you’re a homebody, or if you want to be in one place all the time, get a high school job, get something that’s close to home,” he continued. “The NFL’s not for you. You’re going to move. Take the good with the bad.”

Nobody knows better than Nolan. Before being an NFL assistant and head coach the past 25 seasons, he was raised in the home of Dick Nolan, an assistant in Dallas under Tom Landry before being a head coach in San Francisco (1968-75) and New Orleans (1978-80).

“Without question, it helped a lot,” Nolan said. “It helped my wife, it helped my family because she knew what she was getting into at the time.”

Offensive coordinator Brian Daboll’s family, wife and four children, is younger than Nolan’s and Daboll’s on his third team in four seasons. But the prospect of another move doesn’t cause him angst.

“You don’t focus on that,” Daboll said. “You’ve really got to focus what you can control, which is trying to get prepared for the New York Jets and doing the same meetings you have and studying as much film as you have.’’

None of the three wished they had chosen a more stable profession that wouldn’t include so much upheaval, the vast majority of which gets handled by their spouses.

“I wish I hit the Powerball,” Bowles laughed. “Other than that, no, I love the game.

“If I hit the Powerball in lotto, I would be like the guy on [ The] Shawshank [ Redemption]. I’ll have a boat down there on the island somewhere. I’ll be good to go. You’ll never hear from me again.”

Bush to miss finale

Bush showed he can be an every-down back this season with the Dolphins with 1,086 rushing yards and averaging 5.0 yards per carry.

But he’ll fall short of being an every-game back as he’ll miss Sunday’s season finale against the Jets with a knee injury. The Dolphins held Bush out of practice all week.

“He hasn’t been responding, so we’re going to sit him down,” said Bowles, who also said the same move would have been made had this been another point in the season instead of the finale.

Bush played all 16 games only in his rookie season, 2006, with New Orleans. This season’s 216 carries in 15 games exceed by four his past three seasons — but only 32 games — combined. His combined 259 carries and catches raised his career high from the 243 of his rookie season.

Cornerback Jimmy Wilson (hamstring) is doubtful for Sunday. Linebacker Karlos Dansby returned to practice Friday after dealing with a family emergency.

Arrive early

• The Dolphins ask that fans be in their seats by 12:45 for a pregame ceremony honoring outside linebacker Jason Taylor, who is retiring after 15 NFL seasons, 13 of which were with the Dolphins.

• Safety Yeremiah Bell was voted the 2011 Good Guy Award by the South Florida media who covers the Dolphins daily. The award honors a player for exemplary cooperation with the media over the course of a season and is given by each local Pro Football Writers Association chapter.

Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald

QB Matt Moore (8) and left tackle Jake Long (right) are just two of the talented players on the Dolphins’ roster who are expected to play big roles again next season.