Hill was in pain but returned after wife texted him to ‘get ... back in that game, dawg’
Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill, who was limited to 34 of the Dolphins’ 72 offensive snaps against Tennessee because of a left ankle injury sustained early in the game, doesn’t have a serious injury and is considered day-to-day, coach Mike McDaniel indicated Tuesday.
McDaniel said it’s “a little early to be that confident either way” about Hill playing Sunday against the New York Jets.
“It was a painful ankle,” McDaniel said. “Until he flat-out tells me there’s no doubt he’s going to play, you always have to plan for everything.”
Hill caught just two passes for 13 yards before exiting in the first quarter. He sat out the rest of the first half and initially didn’t come out of the locker room after halftime before returning midway through the third quarter.
Hill wasn’t targeted on his first drive back but made two catches on the series that followed — a 23-yard reception to end third quarter and another for 25 yards to set up a game-tying field goal.
“It was a lot of pain, man,” he said. “It [stunk]. When it actually happened, I’ve obviously been dealing with some ankle injuries this whole season, and when it happened, my first reaction was like, ‘Man, my ankle is gone.’
“My adrenaline kicked in. I ran off the field, then I sat for a while and it got stiff and I was going through a lot of pain. Then I just made up in my mind, I came in at halftime, I texted my wife, I was like, ‘This [expletive] hurt.’ I need an ankle massage tonight, and she’s like, ‘You’d better get your [butt] back in that game, dawg.’
“I was like, ‘all right.’ So I just made up my mind that it’s going to hurt. It’s going to [stink], tonight and tomorrow morning. I just went back in the game on my own.”
Hill said he could not change directions like he normally could, which explains why he sat out some second-half snaps.
“It was just one of them things where like you just got to make your mind up, like ‘Hey, I’m going to do it, man,’” he said.
“One of them... mindsets. You feel me? And it’s going to be like that until the end of the season. I feel like at this point of the season, everybody is typically hurt, and ... nobody is going to give you pity for just being injured, quite frankly.
“That’s just the reality of this league. My mindset is like I’m going to go in, I’m going to dominate no matter how I feel. If I get locked up, it happens. If I drop a pass, it happens. But just know I’m out there. I’m going.”
Would he be inclined to sit out until it fully heals?
“That’s never something that I would be thinking about,” he said. “But if the trainers come to me, if they see something in the scans whenever I get these scans, they say, ‘Hey, Reek, you can sit out,’ I do it.
“But me being me, I don’t want to sit out. I want to be able to help this team any way I can ... I just don’t want to miss any games.”
Hill finished with four receptions for 61 yards in the 28-27 loss.
“This was probably one of my better games blocking,” he said.
Through 13 games, Hill has 1,542 receiving yards, which is nearly 300 yards ahead of the nearest competitor (Philadelphia’s A.J. Brown, 1,258).
His 12 receiving touchdowns are also the most in the league, two more than Tampa Bay’s Mike Evans and Denver’s Courtland Sutton.
At an average of 118.6 yards per game, Hill is now on pace for 2,016 yards over the course of the 17-game season, assuming he plays in each of Miami’s final four games: home games against the Jets on Sunday and Dallas (Dec. 24), a road game against Baltimore (Dec. 31), and a home game against Buffalo (Jan. 6 or 7).
To get to 2,000 yards, Hill would need 458 receiving yards through the final four games, an average of 114.5 yards.