Miami Dolphins well aware of the dangers of domestic violence

Written by Matthew Cannata | Twitter: @PhinManiacs
There has been so much going on over the past two weeks in regards to domestic violence not only in the NFL, but around the world. As the football junkies that all of us are, it all becomes magnified when we see the players we cheer for around the league get in trouble with the law. In the recent cases, they have all been in regards to domestic violence. Whether it's Greg Hardy of the Carolina Panthers, Ray McDonald of the San Francisco 49ers, Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens and now, Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings, it's certainly brought this issue to the forefront and is now a huge topic of discussion.

For the Miami Dolphins, head coach Joe Philbin is well aware of the dangers and routinely speaks to his team about how wrong it is and the effects it has not only on themselves, but those who are the victim along with their friends and families.

"Since day one of training camp and really since day one of the offseason program, we’ve talked about showing respect to everybody, teammates, obviously women are included. When we go on the road, I’ll talk to the team when we go on the road to show respect to the bus drivers, the people that work on the airplane, the people in the hotel who serve you food. Just again being a good, decent human being to other people is really I think the message that we get across as often as we possibly can.”

Philbin has shown to be a no nonsense kind of guy when it comes to dealing with players who are involved in domestic violence disputes. When Philbin took over the team a few years ago, Brandon Marshall was involved in several domestic disputes with reports that he had put his hands around a woman. One of the first things Philbin did was that he traded Marshall away. When Chad Johnson was arrested for a domestic dispute in training camp, the Dolphins didn't wait for the law to rule a verdict and instead, he cut him the next day.

There were, of course, more issues with both players but those domestic disputes played a big role in trading and cutting Marshall and Johnson, respectively. It's an issue that's a dangerous one and one that doesn't appear to be going away pretty soon. Let's hope the rest of the NFL teams spend as much time talking to their players and coaches about domestic violence as the Dolphins do.

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