4 minSports
NFL fines Saints and Rams $500K for practice brawl, but fights won't stop unless players get fined
The NFL fined the New Orleans Saints and Los Angeles Rams $500,000 each after a brawl during joint practices. The league's response may not be enough to stop the violence, as players themselves are not facing fines for their conduct.
The NFL fined the New Orleans Saints and Los Angeles Rams $500,000 each on Thursday, one day after the teams were involved in a serious brawl during a joint practice. The league said its Competition Committee has made sportsmanship, including conduct during joint practices, a point of emphasis in recent years, and reminded all 32 teams of that emphasis this summer.
But the hefty fines may not be enough to curb the violence. Thursday marked the fourth consecutive day that teams holding joint practices got into fights, scuffles, or skirmishes. The Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots went at it over 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.” Vrabel added that players get thrown out of games when those things happen.
At the Chicago Bears joint practice with the Cincinnati Bengals on Thursday, there were 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 New York Giants and Miami 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. The incident apparently featured someone taking a swing at quarterback Jameis Winston. Once Winston got in the scrum and apparently leveled someone, someone else took a swipe at him, leading 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.”
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 so, or because 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.
