Richie Incognito, the suspended Dolphins offensive lineman accused of bullying teammate Jonathan Martin, is firing back at Martin’s accusations.
A Fox News story says that Incognito has hired a public relations firm to make the case that he is no bully. Incognito is promoting that Fox News story on Twitter, and he also privately reached out to PFT on Twitter -- and then, for some reason, blocked PFT from reading his tweets.
According to Incognito, Martin made vulgar comments to him, just as he made vulgar comments to Martin, and it was all within the spirit of typical locker room razzing.
“The coarse and unacceptable comments and text messages that were sent to Jonathan Martin were of the same poor taste as those sent by him,” Incognito’s attorney said in a statement. “All of these communications were provided to Ted Wells and the NFL investigation. What they show is banter between friends, not bullying. . . . Jonathan Martin sent text messages to Richie Incognito which included threats to send someone over to Richie Incognito’s home with a ‘tranquilizer gun and sandpaper condoms’ to homosexually rape him. Jonathan Martin sent another that said he would ‘kill [Richies’s] whole family.’ There was another where Jonathan Martin indicated he would ejaculate in Richie’s face.”
If that’s just locker room banter, it sounds like a real charming locker room they had in Miami.
Incognito is also claiming that what really made Martin upset during the season was that he was about to lose his spot in the starting lineup, and bullying was just a pretext for him leaving the team.
Ted Wells, the independent investigator appointed by the NFL, is expected to release his report on the matter soon. Neither Incognito nor Martin is expected to be back with the Dolphins in 2014.