With one Dolphins game still left in his career tank, and against the nemesis Jets no less, “This is not the time for thank-yous and goodbyes,” Jason Taylor said Wednesday.

Except it is.

Maybe not his, yet, but ours.

Showing Taylor the gratitude he is due for his epic tenure in Miami is the best reason a Dolfan might have for going to the home stadium on Sunday in an otherwise unimportant season finale merely putting the punctuation on a disappointing 5-10 season.

The game was a necessity of perfunctory anticlimax. It took on an overriding emotional layer when Taylor stood at a lectern Wednesday and said, with that familiar measured resonance of his, “After 15 years of doing this and 13 years in Miami, this will be my last game as a Miami Dolphin and a professional football player.”

It is not as if this franchise in its 46 seasons hasn’t had bigger, greater players retire. It has.

One.

His name was Dan Marino.

After the one Dolphin on an echelon all his own, the conversation should start with Taylor as your gauge if the topic is next-greatest Miami careers.

Honor roll worthy

This current Dolphins regime hardly has perfected the art of public relations but would raise its grade by properly acknowledging Taylor’s final game on Sunday, and then by quickly doing what is right by his extraordinary career.

They should announce his name will be the next up on the stadium Honor Roll, and they should announce his 99 jersey number will be retired.

There should be little debate or delay. And if there is any lingering rancor on the club’s part over Taylor twice leaving late in his career for other teams before returning, well, this is why the phrase “let bygones be bygones” was invented.

Only one defensive player in club history, Super Bowl championships-era linebacker Nick Buoniconti, is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Taylor — the sometimes end, sometimes linebacker, full-time quarterback sacker — should be the second.

He has been saying goodbye in his own way for a while now, even though, at age 37, he is healthy and enjoying a solid, seven-sack season that has pushed his career total to 139 1/2 (sixth all-time) and his Dolphins total to 132 (double anyone else).

He has been absorbing the cherished place he’ll miss most: the locker room, with its secret-club camaraderie.

“Been trying to stay around a little longer, hang out a little more,” he said.

He has wondered how who he is, and how he is seen, will change when everything is shoved suddenly to the past tense and he is a former player.

Taylor chuckles that his 6-year-old daughter “could care less” what her father does for a living, but his sons, ages 9 and 7, know well.

“It makes me cool to them,” he said, smiling. “Three months from now I hope I’ll still be a cool dad.”

Taylor’s résumé is all about stats, about honors. The 2006 NFL Defensive Player of the Year award, the six Pro Bowls, the league-record six fumbles returned for touchdowns (and three interception touchdowns, too).

You know what, though? His NFL Walter Payton Man of the Year award says as much about Taylor, because that honor is given for character and for good works off the field. The Jason Taylor Foundation has donated almost $2.5 million in grants and services to local organizations on behalf of children.