Miami Herald Columnist Hammers Jonathan Martin: "Your weak act is officially old"

Jonathan Martin’s interview with Tony Dungy ran on NBC Sports today, and a snippet (above) aired earlier on the Today Show. It was the former Dolphins offensive lineman’s first public comments since he left the team in October.

“There was persistent comments of a racial nature, aggressive sexual comments related to my sister and my mother,” Martin said, via Today.com. “I’ve spoken to my former teammates in other locker rooms across the NFL and I asked them, does this stuff go on? Is this normal rooking hazing? The consensus was, this is not normal.”

In response to the interview, Miami Herald columnist Armando Salguero eviscerated Martin:

"At the risk of sounding unsympathetic, Jon Martin, your weak act is officially old. Go away. Just do what you did best as an offensive lineman on the field and back away. Just do what you did when you left your teammates unexpectedly during the season and simply disappear."

Salguero accuses Martin of deploying a “classic ambulance chaser strategy” with a series of leaks, and indicts him for not standing up for himself beforehand.

"Are you 11 years old? You went to Stanford. You know how to communicate. Why didn’t you take your tormentors aside and tell them in no uncertain terms the verbal abuse had to stop? Why didn’t you tell your head coach, who definitely would have stopped the abuse and done so in-house so as to not embarrass you, your teammates or the organization? And failing that, why didn’t you make an open show of one of the abusers in a full-on locker room takedown that would have definitely gotten everyone’s attention — including your coaches — and screamed something had to change?"

Although there are various methods that Martin may have been able to deploy that were more tactful than going on a nuclear media assault — Salguero suggests several — the idea that Martin should have “been a man” and punched Richie Incognito and/or other teammates in the mouth continues to sound brutish and outdated.

Salguero has made previous controversial remarks; this past March, he apologized for telling a Vietnam veteran he “sucked” as a soldier.