The NFL doesn’t seem to be inclined to do anything about fighting in joint practices, for some strange reason. There’s another way to reduce incidents that could eventually get a player, coach, official, or fan injured during joint practices.
Limit them to one day.
Jets coach Robert Saleh recently explained his preference for restricting joint practices to one day and one day only.
“I like one [joint practice] from a safety measure standpoint,” Saleh told reporters. “I never like two practices, because a second practice is usually when the injuries happen. And then the second practice is when the team that knows they kind of got beat, they go into their meeting rooms, and the coaches are yelling at them. And then they come out and they play with a little more edge and it pisses each other off and all the melees happen.
“And so I just think the second day is very unproductive, except for trying to be reactionary to getting your butt kicked the day before. So it’s a lot more productive if you have one. It’s a lot safer from a player safety standpoint, and you can get a lot more work done on your own. And you’re only a couple of days away from a game, too. So you don’t want that physical of a practice that close to a game.
“So there’s a lot of reasons for it, mainly safety for the players. And production of work, just avoiding all those useless melees.”
The league professes to be concerned about player safety during games. And given the recent prevalence of Guardian Caps, the league clearly is concerned about reducing concussions in practice.
That only makes the league’s decision to bury its head in the sand on the skirmishes at joint practices even more confusing.
We’ve been leading the charge in recent days to get the league to pay more (any) attention to this. It shouldn’t be that way. The league should be doing it without external pressure. It should be an obvious issue to be addressed — unless the truth is that the league is willing to tolerate the increased injury risk because the video of practice fights drives more interest at a time when the games that count haven’t started yet.
Based on the way that many fans have reacted to our call for less post-whistle violence in joint practices, there’s a decent chance that’s exactly the reason for the NFL’s inaction.
