It was another day of joint practices around the NFL on Thursday with more fights between teams, including one between the Miami Dolphins and New York Giants that apparently featured someone taking a swing at quarterback Jameis Winston.
And, yes, this feels like it should be the tipping point because once Winston got in the scrum and apparently leveled someone, someone else took a swipe at him. And that led Giants starting quarterback Jaxson Dart to jump in.
“I just looked over and saw the red 19 jersey (which is Winston) and I was like, ‘I got to go,'” Dart said. “I got to go help my boy! I don’t know what’s going on over there.”
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The NFL has had enough. Well, sort of.
The league levied $500,000 fines against both the Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints on Thursday, one day after the teams were involved in a serious brawl.
The NFL noted that its Competition Committee has made sportsmanship, including conduct during joint practices, a point of emphasis in recent years. The league also reminded all 32 teams of that emphasis this summer.
So, the hefty fines are a solid attempt to curb the violence. But they don’t go far enough.
This week’s brawl should make one thing clear to both the NFL and NFL Players Association: players themselves need to face fines for misconduct during training camp practices, just as they do during preseason and regular-season games.
So you are aware, Thursday marked the fourth consecutive day that teams holding joint practices got into fights, scuffles, skirmishes, whatever noun you wish to use.
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The Eagles and Patriots went at it the past couple of days, even though both coaches warned their teams to abstain before the practice sessions.
“I don’t want anybody fighting,” Patriots coach Mike Vrabel said. “I don’t want our guys fighting in practice. I don’t want them throwing punches.”
“They get thrown out of the game when those things happen,” Vrabel added.
Anyway, at the Bears joint practice with the Bengals on Thursday, we had multiple scuffles. The big one came when Bears receiver Ray-Ray McCloud seemed to throw a punch at a Bengals defensive back, after which multiple Bengals players piled on top of him.
And then there was the brawling in Miami Gardens, where the Giants and Dolphins held a joint practice.
Multiple players from both teams were removed from the practice for throwing punches or seemingly causing others to throw punches. Multiple players were removed or benched.
And that punishment was supposed to serve to calm matters going forward.
But here’s the thing: Getting any part of a hot, muggy, uncomfortable workout off is not the punishment coaches think it is. For some players, especially veterans, it’s a welcome reprieve.
And having the club fined is also not going to cause individual players to curtail their emotions or not defend themselves against actual or perceived wrongs.
Players are simply not going to hold back because their coaches say, or the NFL is fining their beloved club.
The only way teams and the NFL are going to address this issue successfully is with fines to the players themselves. If the teams aren’t going to go there, then the NFL should step in.
Players don’t generally act this way in regular-season or preseason games because it draws a fine for them. From their paychecks.
The league’s own compliance guidance explicitly says its enforcement staff oversees player conduct during preseason, regular-season and postseason games, and specifically identifies fighting as conduct within its jurisdiction.
Not so in joint practices.
So the NFL took a notable step on Thursday. But players are quite likely to continue engaging in joint practice skirmishes until it costs them money.
