Jets coach Todd Bowles manages to avoid being affected by anything that happens to his team. He continued that trend on Friday, unfazed by the training-camp fight between receiver Brandon Marshall and cornerback Darrelle Revis.
“Well, we don’t condone swinging, and we talked about it,” Bowles told reporters after practice. “It’s about that time of camp when it gets a little chippy, but we put it out before we get started.”
Bowles pointed out that Marshall and Revis weren’t the only ones who got chippy on Friday.
“It was more than those two,” Bowles said. “There was a lot of chippiness going on out there. . . . [I]t’s that time of camp. You hit each other for enough times, people get frustrated. We like the motivation. We like the spirit of practice, but we’re not going to punch anybody. You can talk as much as you want. You’re going to get that on Sundays, but other than that, it was fine.”
As to the specific problem between Marshall and Revis, Bowles saw the glass as decidedly half full.
“They’re competing,” Bowles said. “I mean, you love them competing. You need some motivation. You are going to get pissed off at camp as a player. It’s not charm school. You’re going to play football, and both of them got to where they were from making plays and not backing down. Neither player is going to back down. We like that about the competitiveness. You just got to keep it clean, and for the most part they did. . . .
“They were going at it all day. It got a little chippy, I mean that’s just part of football. It’s camp. You can go to every camp probably around the league and you’re going to hear the same thing. Everybody gets chippy. It’s nothing to write home about.”
Did Marshall cross the line by playing the DeAndre-Hopkins-burned-you-repeatedly card on Revis?
“No, it’s by any means necessary when you’re on the field,” Bowles said. “They’re going to get under your skin on Sunday. There are things you don’t hear on Sunday that’s a billion times worse than that. They both have been out there long enough, and they both have tools to get under each other’s skin, especially when it gets chippy, so that’s just part of them that’s talking.”
When it gets chippy, Bowles said he loves it.
“It’s football,” Bowles said. “I mean, we’re not here judging a beauty pageant. You want some players that are chippy and know how to play, and keep it clean, but you want them on the edge.”
For Marshall, there’s a concern that the “edge” suggests a possible regression to past years where he found himself in the middle of a string of incidents. Is Bowles worried about that?
“No, I’m not worried about it at all,” Bowles said. “I was with him in Miami, and I’ve been through it here. Everybody was talking out there. I don’t think that it was exclusive to Brandon.”
Unless Bowles provided a dramatically different message behind closed doors, his position as to the chippiness means there will be more of it moving forward. If they can take that attitude to Sundays in the regular season but not draw penalty flags, Bowles obviously thinks the team will be better for it.
