Former Miami Dolphins Cornerback Describes Craziness of 2013 Season

The Jonathan Martin story continues to reverberate, with former teammate Nolan Carroll explaining Tuesday how the “Bullygate” incident torpedoed the 2013 season.

The whole episode has resurfaced in the news more than 11 years after the fact with the lengthy ESPN feature on Martin, who said he never felt he was being bullied by former teammate Richie Incognito, though that was the finding of an investigation that produced the infamous Ted Wells Report and resulted in Incognito never playing for Miami again and offensive line coach Jim Turner and trainer Kevin O’Neill being fired after that 2013 season.

The Dolphins finished the 2013 season with an 8-8 record and missed a chance to make the playoffs by losing against the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets in the final two games when they needed one win to clinch a playoff spot.

Miami was 3-4 when Martin walked away from the team after an incident in the team cafeteria, defeated the Cincinnati Bengals three nights later on Halloween (the “Walk-Off Game)” and then lost in a Monday night game against the 0-8 Tampa Bay Buccaneers to fall to 4-5 on the season.

The Dolphins then won four of their next five games to move to 8-6, the final win in that stretch coming at home against the New England Patriots in the famous game when safety Michael Thomas clinched the 24-20 victory with an end-zone interception of Tom Brady five days after being signed off the San Francisco 49ers practice squad.

Those final two games ended in 19-0 and 20-7 losses. Ryan Tannehill was sacked seven times and Matt Moore was intercepted twice in the loss at Buffalo before Tannehill threw three picks in the finale against the Jets in Miami.

Nolan Carroll, a cornerback on that 2013 team, discussed on The Joe Rose Show on South Florida radio station WQAM on Tuesday the toll the Martin saga took on the team.

“Going into that Cincinnati game, just hearing all the circus and everything we had to fight through for almost seven weeks, if people really think about it, we went 5-2 on that little run that we had, and just getting ready to play Buffalo, I just remember it, guys were exhausted,” Carroll said. “We had two games to go to fight for the playoffs. And I just remember just thinking mentally — it wasn’t even physically — we were just mentally exhausted from all the questions pertaining to this, everything, like, every day was something new that was coming out that, I mean, it’s just like, for what?”

Carroll explained his issue with Martin on the show.

“The fact that you’re willing to basically burn an organization, burn a franchise, because you couldn’t stand up to what you needed to stand up to, that’s what I don’t have respect for,” Carroll said. “It had been fine if he had just not said anything, you just went off into the sunset and left everybody guessing. But the fact that you have to revisit this, and a lot of people have tried to move on with their lives after, that’s what I look at. That’s what I lost respect for him, and I don’t respect him because of that, like if there was just so many different ways he could have gone about doing it, but at the end of the day I just really feel like him himself, he started this victimhood.

“We’re fighting as a team daily to to accomplish something, which is win the Lombardi Trophy, get to the playoffs. And the fact that you didn’t see it that way and you didn’t want to handle it the right way, at the end of the day, we’re family. All families have problems. All families have that one guy or family member that says something crazy or does something crazy. At the end of the day, you all love each other. You care on each other, and if you can find a way to get through it, you do that, and you gain more respect from your teammates in the organization when you’re able to keep things in house and grow from it. And he didn’t do that.”

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