OT: Dolphins/Martin/Incognito Scandal

[oneinchpunch]

Report: Coaches wanted Incognito to toughen up Martin

When Armando Salguero of the Miami Herald visited PFT Live on Tuesday and we discussed the possibility that Dolphins guard Richie Incognito’s treatment of tackle Jonathan Martin came at the behest of a coaching staff hoping to make Martin tougher, Salguero predicted that, if that ends up being the case, a lot of people will be fired.

A lot of people apparently will be fired.

According to Omar Kelly of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Dolphins coaches asked Incognito “to toughen up” Martin after he missed a voluntary workout during the 2013 offseason. Kelly cites “at least two” unnamed sources.

Per the unnamed sources, Incognito may have taken his orders too far. Specifically, the sources tell Kelly that the racially-charged voice message from Incognito to Martin came after skipped two days of the team’s voluntary OTA program.

“Incognito was encouraged by his coaches to make a call that would ‘get [Martin] into the fold,’” Kelly reports.

Regardless of whether Incognito took his orders too far, those who gave the orders will be facing serious consequences, if the report is accurate. Management-level employees can’t pull the rip cord on a reputed nut job and then throw their hands in the air and say “that was an overreaction” when the local enforcer is overly zealous with his methods of enforcement.

Apart from the fact that the report suggests a violation of the rules regarding voluntary workouts, the report indicates that the coaches set in motion the events that resulted in Martin leaving the team due to ongoing harassment by Incognito. Even though Kelly’s report focuses specifically on communications occurring in the offseason, it’s quite possible that the effort to toughen up Martin was as extensive as the cinematic effort to “train” PFC William Santiago.

To summarize, one of the biggest messes in recent years is about to get a lot messier. And if Kelly’s report is accurate, more people than Incognito will soon be former employees of the Dolphins.

[Bolt-O]

Someone call a Code Red?

[Little_Charger]

You damn right I did

[TTK]

Wow.

[blahblahblah]

So much wrong with this whole thing. Incognito has always been a thug. Wasn't he dismissed from two or three college teams? That ain't easy.

[6025]

You can't handle the truth.

[Panama]

:abandonthread:

[TTK]

Colonel Joseph R. Philbin, Commanding Officer, National Football League, Miami, Florida.

Have you ever spent time on a football team, son? Ever served on an offensive line? Ever put your block in another lineman's hands, ask him to put his block in yours? We run plays, son. We run plays or people get sacked.

Son, we live in a world that has offensive lines, and those lines have to be filled by 350-pound men with helmets. Who's gonna do it? You?

I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Martin, and you curse the Dolphins' o-line. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what coaches know. That Martin's departure, while tragic, probably saved Ryan Tannehill's life. And Richie Incognito's existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves quarterbacks' lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about on Twitter, you want him on that line. YOU NEED HIM ON THAT LINE. We use words like shiver, rip technique, smash. We use those words as a backbone of a life spent defending quarterbacks. You use them as a comment on Pro Football Talk.

I have neither the TIME nor the INCLINATION to EXPLAIN MYSELF to a man who rises and sleeps under the fandom of the very team I and then b****es on Twitter about the way I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and bought a season ticket. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a helmet, and stand at left tackle. Either way, I don't give a DAMN what you football fans think you're entitled to. *Did you order the code red?* YOU'RE GOD DAMN RIGHT I DID! - Joe Philbin

[richpjr]

From SI:

[Bolt-O]

I'm hoping the drama continues into the Charger-Dolphin game. Dolphins should beat the Bucs easily, and they'll carry the emotion into this game, but will be flat as the drudgery continues along with the internal investigation. Good thing here is that no one has died, and it looks more like a comedy for non-Dolphin fans.

Martin sounds like the ticking-bomb type, that seems aloof to the situation until there is a last straw...which is usually not anything big at all. We know that Incognito has a long history of being a jerk, but he might not be the only one of being a jerk in this situation. Other players have gone off the deep end before at the strangest of times, like that d'uh center Barret Robins just before the SuperBowl. Rookies next season won't be saddled with a huge dinner bill going forward, that's for sure.

[Big Dog]

The article by Lydon Murtha has that ring of truth to it, to me ... the part that is missing is that Martin went to a very sheltered Private High School in the Bay Area and then followed up with degree in Classical studies at Standford ... he comes from wealthy, educated, sophisicated, intelligent and politically correct family and region of the country. Nothing about his upbringing ever prepared him for the poor, illiterare, crude, stupid and politically incorrect world of ex-SEC football teams and players like Incognito.

A guy whose is a total fish out of water in his profession like Martin with the softest upbringing and completely unprepared for the environment in which he finds himself ... right next to the crudest of the crude, loud mouthed, foul mouthed mean ass mother trucker ... not a receipe for success

Yes, Incognito is a nasty piece of work and every bit the bully type and I don't even care that he is about to get railroaded and ironically "black-listed" right out of the NFL ... but Martin is too sheltered, solitary and mentally weak for a physcial, tough and TEAM oriented game like football, even if he had never met Incognito ...

Finally, Dolphin Coaches ordered a Code Red ... they asked Incognito to "toughen the kid up" and Incognito did it exactly the way the Coaches knew he would ... do they regret it now, YES ... are they going to say they had "no idea it would lead to this", YES ... are they lying, deluding or deceiving themselves, YES ...

All 3 things are true, Incognito bullied him (maybe even unknowingly) not doubt ... Martin is too soft, no doubt ... Coaches ordered the Code Red, no doubt !!!

[6025]

Whitlock has a different take.

Mass incarceration has turned segments of Black America so upside down that a tatted-up, N-word-tossing white goon is more respected and accepted than a soft-spoken, highly intelligent black Stanford graduate.

According to a story in the Miami Herald, black Dolphins players granted Richie Incognito "honorary" status as a black man while feeling little connection to Jonathan Martin.

Welcome to Incarceration Nation, where the mindset of the Miami Dolphins' locker room mirrors the mentality of a maximum-security prison yard and where a wide swath of America believes the nonviolent intellectual needs to adopt the tactics of the barbarian.

I don't blame Jonathan Martin for walking away from the Dolphins and checking himself into a hospital seeking treatment for emotional distress. The cesspool of insanity that apparently is the Miami locker room would test the mental stability of any sane man. Martin, the offspring of Harvard grads, a 24-year-old trained at some of America's finest academic institutions, is a first-time offender callously thrown into an Attica prison cell with Incognito and Aaron Hernandez's BFF Mike Pouncey. Dolphins warden Jeff Ireland and deputy warden Joe Philbin put zero sophisticated thought into what they were doing when they drafted Martin in the second round in 2012.

You don't put Jonathan Martin in a cell with Incognito and Pouncey. You draft someone else, and let another team take Martin. The Dolphins don't have the kind of environment to support someone with Martin's background. It takes intelligence and common sense to connect with and manage Martin. Those attributes appear to be in short supply in Miami.

"Richie is honorary," a black former Dolphins player told Miami Herald reporter Armando Salguero. "I don't expect you to understand because you're not black. But being a black guy, being a brother is more than just about skin color. It's about how you carry yourself. How you play. Where you come from. What you've experienced. A lot of things."

I'm black. And I totally understand the genesis of this particular brand of stupidity and self-hatred. Mass Incarceration, its bastard child, Hurricane Illegitimacy, and their marketing firm, commercial hip-hop music, have created a culture that perpetrates the idea that authentic blackness is criminal, savage, uneducated and irresponsible. The tenets of white supremacy and bigotry have been injected into popular youth culture. The blackest things a black man can do are loudly spew the N-word publicly and react violently to the slightest sign of disrespect or disagreement.

Yeah, Richie Incognito is an honorary black. And Jonathan Martin is a sellout.

"I don't have a problem with Richie," Dolphins receiver Mike Wallace was quoted in Salguero's story. "I love Richie."

Yeah, the Dolphins are circling the wagons around Incognito. I get Ryan Tannehill's defense of his Pro Bowl left guard. He needs him. He doesn't believe the Dolphins can protect him or win games without Incognito. There's a popular belief you can't consistently win football games without a few "thugs" like Incognito in your locker room. Makes you wonder how Stanford competes with USC, Oregon, UCLA, etc., every year. You wonder how Nebraska and Oregon survived after booting Incognito. You wonder why three NFL teams let him go. Maybe he's not as essential as the myth-makers would have you believe.

But what makes me want to check into a mental hospital is Miami's black players' unconditional love of Incognito and indifference to Martin.

It points to our fundamental lack of knowledge of our own history in this country. We think the fake tough guy, the ex-con turned rhetoric spewer was more courageous than the educated pacifist who won our liberation standing in the streets, absorbing repeated ass-whippings, jail and a white assassin's bullet. We fell for the okeydoke.

We think Malcolm X was blacker than Martin Luther King Jr.

I'm as guilty as anybody. I've read X's autobiography a half-dozen times. I own Spike Lee's movie about X and watch it a couple of times a year. I love Malcolm X. But I'm not an idiot. MLK liberated me. MLK blazed the proper path to respect, progress and achievement. Barack Obama stands on MLK's shoulders. And so does Jonathan Martin.

Richie Incognito is an "honorary" bigot, standing on the shoulders of Gov. George Wallace. The fact that a group of young black men in the Dolphins' locker room can't see that speaks to the level of ignorance unleashed by Mass Incarceration, Hurricane Illegitimacy and commercial hip-hop.

Too many young people have grown up. There's a difference between growing up and being raised. When you grow up, you're left to figure things out on your own. That's why we have a generation of young people who can't recognize the self-hatred and damage of describing yourself as the N-word. They don't know what they haven't been taught. Video games, iPads and headphones can't raise a child. But those technological advances can entertain and empower popular culture to corrupt.

I don't know Jonathan Martin. He's biracial. He was apparently smart enough to qualify for entry into Harvard. He's huge and athletic. He strikes me as someone ripe to struggle with his identity.

The Dolphins tagged him the "Big Weirdo." The Dolphins held up Richie Incognito as the ultimate role model for offensive linemen. Incognito was a Pro Bowler. He was a member of the six-man leadership council. It makes perfect sense for a kid like Martin to befriend Incognito and try to fit in. I'm sure they were best friends, for a time. I'm sure Incognito offered Martin physical protection on the football field. It's standard operating procedure for a prison-yard bully to cultivate a relationship that is equal parts fear, love and disrespect. It's how you turn a guy out and make him grab your belt loop.

Martin was confused. He probably thought the bullying and hazing would pass after his rookie season. He wanted to fit in and make it in the NFL. The paycheck is incredible. He tried to laugh off the abuse and disrespect. He participated in it. He coughed up $15,000 for a trip to Las Vegas he didn't want to take.

Finally he snapped. He wasn't raised to be a full-blown idiot. He was raised to think and solve problems with his mind. He was savvy enough to figure out a physical confrontation with Incognito was a no-win situation. It wouldn't curb Incognito's behavior or change the culture inside the Miami locker room. It would confirm it. In order to win the fight, Martin would have to physically harm Incognito. It would not be a one-punch or two-punch fight.

Martin walked. If the entry fee to being an NFL offensive lineman is adopting the mindset of Incognito and Pouncey, Martin wisely chose not to pay it. He has a developed brain and a supportive family unit. He's not desperate. He has options. People with limited options and no family support may not understand or respect his decision. That's on them and illustrates the vast impact of Mass Incarceration and Hurricane Illegitimacy.

It's now time for Roger Goodell to render a verdict on wardens Ireland and Philbin and Cell Block D leader Incognito. The world is so upside down that I half expect Goodell to suspend Martin for conduct detrimental to American idiocy.