Dolphins LB Jaelan Phillips injures Achilles vs. Jets. ‘It doesn’t look great’
Dolphins outside linebacker Jaelan Phillips sustained a non-contact Achilles injury that forced him to be carted off the field in the fourth quarter of Miami’s game against the New York Jets on Friday.
Phillips began to plant off his right foot at the snap of the ball when he quickly fell to the ground. The entire Dolphins sideline came onto the field as Phillips was placed on a cart and transported into the locker room. Miami quickly ruled out Phillips for the remainder of the game. He was seen in the locker room after the game, a 34-13 win for the Dolphins, on crutches and with a boot on his right foot.
“It doesn’t look great, but we’ll find out more tomorrow,” coach Mike McDaniel said. “I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but not fired about it.”
McDaniel added: “In the short term, from my vantage point, just my experience of people, if it’s the worst-case scenario, you get a chance to write your own story. He’s the type of person and he has the right mindset where he’ll be able to turn anything that’s perceived as negative into a potential positive. But this is going to be tough and trying for him as we get our information back and prepare ourselves for the worst-case scenario.”
Phillips, in his third season, was playing the best football of his young career after dealing with an early-season oblique injury. He entered Week 12 with 5.5 sacks and recorded another sack against the Jets prior to his injury.
After the game, Phillips wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter): “Absolutely devastated, but I feel strength in knowing that this is all a part of God’s plan, and that I have an incredible team and support system around me. I’ll be back stronger than ever.”
Safety Jevon Holland, who entered the NFL with Phillips as a member of the Dolphins’ 2021 Draft class, called his teammate’s injury “very tough.”
“Jaelan’s having a helluva year,” Holland said. “Stuff like that, it’s difficult in the middle of the game. It kind of like pulls you right out of your mode. You feel for him. Everybody on the field does. But we’ve got to go out there and finish the job because I know that that’s what he wanted us to do. But it’s really tough.”
After the game, multiple Dolphins players bemoaned the field conditions at MetLife Stadium, which uses synthetic turf as opposed to natural grass. A new surface was installed at MetLife Stadium before the season in hopes of decreasing injuries at the home of the Jets and New York Giants.
In a recent league-wide poll conducted by The Athletic, players voted MetLife Stadium as the worst venue to play in, criticizing the turf as part of their reasoning.
According to ESPN, the injury rate in each of the past 11 seasons has been higher on turf, “although in 2021 the figures were close enough that the difference was statistically insignificant.”
At the beginning of the season, the NFL Players’ Association called for the league to get rid of turf and install grass fields at stadiums.
“I don’t know the statistics or anything like that, but I do know turf does increase the chance of getting hurt,” Holland said. “That field is trash.”
Running back Raheem Mostert, who has been vocal about the conditions at MetLife Stadium in the past, again called for the NFL to take action against turf fields.
“We’ve got to do something about this turf and this playing surface,” Mostert said, “because obviously it’s still a major problem, even with trying to figure out what we can do. But I don’t know, it just has to change.”
He added: “The reason why guys are against the turf [is] there’s no give. With grass, there’s give-way and you’re able to get out of certain positions. But with turf, you’re kind of stuck in that position and it ultimately causes severe injuries. I know there’s a lot of analytics and stuff like that and people go back and forth on different playing surfaces. But if you’re truly out there and you’re a player, you know how it feels to at least have some give, and grass is the ultimate give in that aspect.”
This story was originally published November 24, 2023 at 5:41 PM.
