2013 NFL Season

[Hooch]

The messy just got messier:

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.