It already was a pretty strange week as it related to Dolphins linebacker Joey Porter. On the eve of Sunday's game, it got even weirder.

At around 4:30 p.m. Saturday, team representative Harvey Greene began notifying local reporters that Porter had been downgraded to ``out'' for Sunday's game against the Buccaneers at Land Shark Stadium because of a ``coach's decision.''

Greene could not give the reason for the decision, but he did note it is not injury-related. Porter missed practice Wednesday and Thursday because of a knee issue, but he was listed as probable on the team's injury report Friday after returning to practice.

Whatever the reason, no one wanted to talk about it Saturday night. coach Tony Sparano did not issue any comment, and multiple sources -- both close to Porter and within the team -- would not discuss the situation, either.

After practice Friday, when Sparano addressed the media around 2 p.m. for his daily news conference, he did not seem to have any issues with Porter when he was asked if he sensed frustration from the linebacker in the wake of a zero-tackle performance last week against New England.

``No, I don't, certainly not,'' Sparano said. ``I see no frustration. I don't think that he's affected, but what I do see is a guy that's played in enough football games to know there's some things I need to do better out there.''

``There's a lot of things that people say about Joey that are not always favorable, but one of the good things about Joey is [that] the guy's a pretty good pro. He sees it, he knows. When he sees it, and he knows, he takes it personally.''

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