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Any and all discussion about the Miami Dolphins right now has nothing to do with the Monday Night Football matchup they have this week with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Instead, it's all focused on the situation that led to tackle Jonathan Martin leaving the team and alleging player misconduct at the hands of guard Richie Incognito. On Wednesday, the Dolphins players began speaking out about the media portrayal of their locker room, and how they saw the situation prior to the blow up.
Thursday afternoon, wide receiver Brian Hartline made his weekly appearance on the "Paul and Young Ron Show" on BIG 105.9 FM in Miami, and spoke about the situation.
"You know, after a while, things were kind of getting out of hand," Hartline said, explaining his frustration with the picture being painted by the media. "The entire locker room, every single professional football player in that locker room, was being challenged. Their character was being challenged, their leadership was being challenged. That's just not fair, and that's just not the way we do things.
"So, eventually, he [Coach Joe Philin] was like, 'You know what? Enough is enough. I'm not telling you guys to say anything, or this or that, but you should stick up for yourselves.' That's all this is. We work way too hard and have done way too much things to just let people kinf of, quote, unquote, boss us around. In the end, we've been wanting to [talk to the media], but out of respect for our coach, and being the high character guys we are in our locker room, we felt it was necessary to listen to him. And, once we were told we were able to stick up for ourselves, we did."
Hartline also discussed if there was a better way to handle the situation between Martin and Incognito. "Everyon's different, so that's why you can't be the people that say 'Well, I would do this, so he should have done this, he should have done that,' because that's not fair to him. But, with that being said, I think there's always a better way to handle this situation.
"I'm a person who goes straight to the person and says 'Hey man, you've got to cut the crap out.' If he doesn't get it, then there's plenty of people you could talk to on the team, the coach, or, especially, the one I really thought of, is Kaleb Thornhill, he's our Director of Player Personnel, and he's really that guy that's there for the players, for player development. He's really there for the players, he's a very nice guy, he's easy to talk to. He would never put you in harms way."
Hartline also discussed the fact that the team is tired of talking about the situation, which you can hear him say here:
You can head over to the Big 105.9 website to hear more of the "Paul and Young Ron Show" interview with Hartline.
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