Tyreek Hill and Calais Campbell were detained before the Miami Dolphins' Week 1 win, but the incident still carried an emotional toll on the team.
Hill was pulled over by Miami police for possible a traffic violation Sunday. It's not clear what prompted police to pull Hill over, but body cam footage showed the star wide receiver get dragged out of his car and get detained while laying down face-first on the ground.
Campbell and former New England Patriots tight end Jonnu Smith attempted to stop the arrest, which prompted officers to detain Campbell, too. The pair were released and played Sunday, but it was a jarring scene for everyone.
"It's been hard for me not to find myself more upset the more I think about it," McDaniel told reporters Monday, per the Dolphins. "And that's because of my teammates and trying to put myself in that situation that they've described emotionally. And then knowing more than that, the thing that (expletives) me up honestly, to be quite frank, is knowing that I don't know what that feels like. I think it's very, very important that two things should be true. I think you let due process work and (let) information be gathered to appropriately project an opinion. However, I can get away from the fact I know their experience to be."
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McDaniel is half-Black, but he's admitted that because of his appearance, he doesn't experience the same racial profiling that was suspected to have occurred to Hill and Campbell. While fighting through emotions, he said that was why sympathetic toward his players for what happened to them last Sunday.
The Dolphins released a statement asking Miami-Dade police to discipline the officers from Sunday's scene.
Featured image via Sam Navarro/Imagn Images