NFL Hall of Famer and former coach Mike Ditka insists "baby" Jonathan Martin could never play on one of his teams.
"I want to say one thing," Ditka said during ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown. "If I was the coach, I wouldn't have either Incognito, the bully, or the baby, Martin, on my team. That's me. Does that make me right? No. That makes me me. And I would stand up to that, because you don't do what Martin did and you don't do want Incognito did. Period."
ProfootballTalk.com reports that "Iron Mike" previously suggested Martin should have punched Incognito in the mouth, but on Sunday he didn't seem to have much use for either man.
Emotions ran high as Ditka shared the airwaves with former NFLers turned broadcasters Keyshawn Johnson, Cris Carter, and Tom Jackson regarding the issue of hazing/bullying in the NFL generally and the Miami situation specifically.
"The NFL locker room is a workplace," said Carter. "And the NFL's committed to the belief that all employees have the right to work in an environment that is free from harassment, intimidation, discrimination, racial or sexual harassment, as well as harassment related to employees based on religion, national origin, age or disability. . . . When you drive through the gate, give them your IR, you are in an active workplace. So all these ideas that [in] the locker room you can do this, that is not true. In an NFL locker room you are not allowed to act like an animal and a savage."
Johnson addressed the question of whether Martin should have handled the problem internally.
"To hear Coach Philbin say Martin could have come to him, no he couldn't have," said Johnson. "Obviously, because he didn't. There's a reason he checked himself into a hospital. He didn't just decide one day, 'Oh, you know what, I'm gonna wake up and go check myself into a hospital because I'm not feeling good.' No, he checked himself into a hospital because he was disturbed about everything that's been happening to him over the last year and a half, Coach."
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