Tyreek Hill #10 of the Miami Dolphins celebrates after a 42-38 win over the Baltimore Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium on September 18, 2022. ; Keeta Vaccaro attends The Model Experience’s Fashion Week Festival at Los Angeles Convention Center on September 30, 2023. . PHOTO:
PATRICK SMITH/GETTY ; KEVIN WINTER/GETTY
Tyreek Hill #10 of the Miami Dolphins celebrates after a 42-38 win over the Baltimore Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium on September 18, 2022. ; Keeta Vaccaro attends The Model Experience’s Fashion Week Festival at Los Angeles Convention Center on September 30, 2023. .Photo:
Patrick Smith/Getty ; Kevin Winter/Getty
Monday Night Football almost turned into a Monday nightmare for Miami Dolphins fans when wide receiver Tyreek Hill went down with an injury early in Sunday’s 28-27 loss to the Tennessee Titans.
Luckily for Hill and his fans, the NFL star’s wife, Keeta Vaccaro Hill, inspired her husband to get back in the game with a motivational text message during halftime.
According to ESPN, Hill told reporters his first reaction to the injury was, “Man, my ankle is gone,” so he “ran off the field” after his adrenaline “kicked in” following the hit that forced him out of bounds.
“I sat for a while, and it got stiff, and I was going through a lot of pain,” he added. “Then I just made up in my mind,” Hill said, per ESPN. “I texted my wife, I was like, ‘This s— hurt.’ I need an ankle massage tonight, and she’s like, ‘You’d better get your a– back in that game, dawg.’ I was like, ‘All right.'”
Hill continued, “So I just made up my mind that it’s going to hurt. It’s going to suck.”
The Dolphins wide receiver said he wanted “to get out there and bring some energy and be that spark,” for his team, but the game unfortunately turned into a frustrating loss to Tennessee.
The Miami Dolphins player is a newlywed, after tying the knot with his wife on Nov. 8, 2023 during the team’s bye week, he confirmed in a post-practice interview later that month.
“I did get married to my longtime fiancé,” Hill said in a clip shared on X (formerly Twitter). “It was about time. It’s something that we wanted to do over the bye week and we did it. We went through with it. Well, I finally went through with it.”
“It feels good man,” he continued. “Everything that’s been happening to me, man, has been for good reasons.”
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He told reporters at the time that the decision to get married then was spontaneous, but he felt it was “perfect timing” after a two-year engagement.
“I was spending a lot of time with my kids, spending a lot of time with her, and the conversation just came up,” he said. “I was like, ‘Babe, we’ve been engaged so long, are you ready to tie the knot?’ “
Hill and Vaccaro got engaged on July 4, 2021, at an Independence Day party — and his then-Kansas City Chiefs teammates were thrilled for him.
Speaking to TMZ after the proposal, the wide receiver shared that he called his teammate Patrick Mahomes, who was engaged to his now-wife Brittany Mahomes at the time, and told him he was officially in the fiancé “club.”
“As soon as I did it, I called up my boy Pat, like, ‘I’m in the club now man, I’m in the club!’ ” Hill recalled. “He was pretty fired up, he was pretty turned up by that.”
Hill was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs in the fifth round of the 2016 Draft. In 2022, the Chiefs traded him to Miami for a haul of draft picks.