It’s a tradition truly unlike any other.
Once the games start, the NFL micromanages players, penalizing and fining any form of actual or perceived disrespect that might amount to the first step toward a potential fight. But before Week One, it’s open season on players beating the crap out of each other in practice.
Every year, we see it. Fights among teammates in camp. Fights among players from other teams in joint practices. Last year, Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald swung a Bengals helmet so hard that the helmet became flattened against a helmet that another Bengal was actually wearing.
If Donald had done that during a game, the league would have suspended him. Since it happened in a joint practice, the league didn’t even bat an eye.
It makes no sense. It’s not part of the game. It’s not among the risks that a player assumes when signing up to play.
And yet the league does nothing. The teams are left to discipline their players. And the teams won’t do much more than give the player a perfunctory talking-to, while the coach suppresses the shit-eating grin that flows from seeing a genuine fire in his players.
It will continue until someone gets seriously injured during a fight, whether it’s another player or a bystander or (given the structure of some training camps) a paying customer who gets caught up in a melee that spills over to the spectators. That’s when the league will clutch pearls and feign surprise over something it claims it never could have seen coming.
Even though we see it coming every year, in nearly every camp. And in many of the joint practices.
Without real discipline for such behavior, the behavior will continue. Until it results in an outcome that finally forces the NFL to change the behavior.
So why not change it now? Maybe they like the coverage of it. Or maybe they just don’t care. Regardless, if/when that serious injury happens, they’ll suddenly care.
Or, at a minimum, pretend to.
