Jason Taylor carried slowly off the field up on the shoulders of teammates Sunday afternoon was the last snapshot Dolphins fans would see of their all-time great defender. Taylor waved at the fans’ appreciative cheering but he was shaking his head, embarrassed by the attention, by the royal treatment.

“Don Shula deserves to be carried off. Dan Marino does. I don’t,” he would say later. “I told ’em to put me down three or four times, but they wouldn’t do it.”

Teammate Kendall Langford, one of the carriers, was too preoccupied within the moving throng to hear Taylor’s commands.

“I was worried about holding his legs,” Langford said, laughing. “I didn’t want to be the guy who dropped him!”

Minutes later, in the privacy of the locker room following the Dolphins’ season-ending 19-17 victory over the rival New York Jets, teammates would see more of Taylor than fans ever could. More of what Taylor will miss most of NFL after 15 seasons, 13 with the Dolphins.

The camaraderie and intimate bond of it — the family of it.

Taylor held the game ball he had been presented and stood in the center of the room as his teammates gathered ’round, everyone still in dirty, sweaty uniforms.

The speech

He started talking about how he was the one who felt honored to be in this company, in this fraternity, even on the day when everybody else was honoring him.

He couldn’t finish.

He dissolved into tears, the reverent, building applause of the other men in the room hiding the sounds of his sobs, the sounds of the reality of the sands all gone in a man’s career hourglass, 15 years later, yet seemingly all at once.

The teammates who so respect and adore Taylor became emotional just trying to later relay that scene, to do it justice.

“It was moving. Jason tried to hold ’em back. But he let ’em go,” fellow linebacker Karlos Dansby said of a strong man’s tears. “If you don’t get goosebumps listening to him, and seeing that? Well, you don’t have a heart. You don’t understand.”

So much of the finale of this disappointing 6-10 season was about tomorrow, about what’s next. Now begins in earnest the search for a new coach to (likely) replace Tony Sparano’s interim replacement, Todd Bowles. Now begins the full-bore planning for the upcoming draft, which (hopefully) will produce a first-round quarterback up to being handed the keys to the franchise.

All about J.T.

The future can start now, but Sunday was about the past, about farewell. It was about Jason Taylor.

The second-greatest playing career in the Dolphins’ 46-season history (only Marino’s was greater) closed Sunday. His 139 1/2 career sacks should see him in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Fate had Marino’s final game a humiliating 62-7 playoff loss in Jacksonville. Taylor got luckier, with a win over the team’s biggest rival — a victory that had his handprints on it even if the stat sheet didn’t particularly say so.

The day’s starring defensive role belonged Randy Starks, who had two interceptions and a sack.

“I told him I was jealous. That was the kind of game I wanted to have!” Taylor said.

Instead the retiring No. 99 would have only one tackle, but it was his hit on Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez that led to one of Starks’ interceptions, and a QB pressure that contributed to the other.