Dolphins coach Joe Philbin spoke to the media on Monday, for the first time since kicker Caleb Sturgis suffered an injury while playing kickball. And while Philbin didn’t have much to say about it, he said enough to make it clear that Sturgis doesn’t bear any blame for it.
“Everything that happens from the minute they walk in here until the minute they leave is under my watch,” Philbin said, via a transcript provided by the team. “We do things strength and conditioning-wise. We do things classroom-wise. We do things on the practice field. We do things for team building and everything runs through me. That’s what happened.”
So what happened? A freak accident?
“I’m not going to get into the thing,” Philbin said. “I would just tell you that everything that we do is for a reason or there’s a purpose behind everything we do, and we’ll continue to give thought to every single minute that these guys spend in here is valuable time. We have six hours this time of year, some days only four hours, so every single thing we do, we think about, we look at, we analyze and do the things we think are in the best interest of the team.”
It’s admirable that Philbin accepted the blame for the Sturgis kick-ball injury. And it’s understandable Philbin doesn’t want to wallow in the reality that he got his kicker injured by allowing his players to play a game typically played on grade school playgrounds.
But why be so secretive about what happened? That only makes it seem more embarrassing than it is. If, given the nature of the injury, that’s even possible.