New York Jets reporters seem very concerned about the team’s training camp fights. Robert Saleh has faced many questions about those scuffles and how they will play out in the upcoming joint practice with the Washington Commanders.
Saleh has given mostly the same answer: if it’s about frustration over a player going too hard, that’s fine, but if it’s cheap, that’s not. He didn’t seem put out over the fights, both past and future. He said that as a coach, he wants his players to play with a little bit of an edge.
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However, he drew one hard line in the sand regarding those fights: “Like I’ve told our guys, if you throw a punch you’re kicked out of the game, so don’t do it in practice.” He’s said as much in each training camp as the Jets’ head coach.
The Jets have thrown plenty of punches in training camp over the last couple of seasons. In Tuesday’s practice, someone threw a punch, although it is unclear who the culprit was. Perhaps Saleh should have taken a similar approach to his new pre-snap penalty rule: removing the player from practice for at least one snap.
It’s worth noting that fights in practice can have financial repercussions. The most prominent fight on the NFL landscape right now is a series of melees between the Giants and Lions. Each team was fined $200,000 for those brawls. According to ESPN, all NFL teams were warned that “fighting and unprofessional conduct at joint practices would not be tolerated.”
Expect heightened tempers and plenty of fighting in the Jets-Commanders joint practice. Saleh is okay with it minus the punching. The most important part of those scuffles is to avoid injury. Other than that, it’s just noise surrounding a practice that has far more interesting storylines.
