Communication breakdowns: A timeline of Taylor Decker's strange end in Detroit and lingering awkwardness with team leaders
Phoenix, Ariz. — As we sit on opposite corners of a sectional couch at his home just south of picturesque Camelback Mountain, former Detroit Lions offensive tackle Taylor Decker methodically searches for the right words.
There are a lot of thoughts and plenty of emotions. It’s been anything but a standard offseason for the 10-year veteran. For the past decade, Decker has known he’d spend his fall in Michigan, protecting his quarterback’s blindside.
He returned to his offseason Arizona home in early January, unsure if he’d ever do it again. However, after nearly two months of reflection and recovery, he came to the conclusion he had one more year to give to football, and more specifically, the Lions, the franchise that drafted him in the first round out of Ohio State in 2016.
It felt like a black-and-white decision: Will he or won’t he? As it turns out, it was more complicated than that. That was news to us and also news to Decker.