John A. T. Hull, a Republican from Iowa who served 10 terms in Congress, was way ahead of his time when he voiced his disapproval of joint practices, calling them “impractical.” And America took note, as evidenced by this headline in The Montana Record-Herald: “HULL IS AGAINST PLAN.”
OK, so Congressman Hull, in his role as chairman of the House Committee on Military Affairs, was coming out against joint practices, or “joint practice operations,” between regular forces of the United States Army and the National Guard.
And, OK, it was in 1902.
But it’s the “impractical” that caught my eye while researching joint practices, and in that spirit, I’m happy to repurpose Hull’s back-in-the-day messaging for our modern-day NFL discussion.
Joint practices are in the news again, and for the only reason they’re ever in the news: A fight broke out. Fights, actually. If the late, great comedian Rodney Dangerfield were still alive, he’d be saying, “I went to the fights last night, and an NFL joint practice broke out.” That’s how common the fighting has become. This time, it took place during a summer camp jamboree between the Detroit Lions and New York Giants, with Monday’s pushing and jawing spilling right into Tuesday. The main attraction was a game of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! between Malik Nabers, a rookie receiver on the Giants, and Lions safety Kerby Joseph. Hilarity then ensued in the form of mini one-on-one fights between this and that player.
“Stuff like that’s going to happen. It’s football at the end of the day,” Nabers said, as reported by Charlotte Carroll and Colton Pouncy of The Athletic.
The Malik Nabers & Kerby Joseph fight is nuts
Via @trademarkse pic.twitter.com/u9mXTMnVz8
— Talkin’ Giants (@TalkinGiants) August 6, 2024
It’s football, but it’s also Hollywood. Let’s not kid ourselves about that. Joint practices are now covered along the lines of a regular-season game, only without the halftime show. You throw a bunch of professional athletes from opposing teams on the same practice field, order them to start running into each other, and in full view of fans, cameras and reporters, and payback is going to find its way into the playbook.
It’s worth noting that the Kerby Joseph-Malik Nabers dustup may have been precipitated by Joseph saying something.
“He did,” Nabers said, “but I’m not going to repeat it.”
Makes you kind of long for the old days, when guys like Mean Joe Greene, Conrad Dobler and Dick Butkus would never say things during practice that you can’t say on television. And even if they did, television wasn’t paying much attention to practice in those days, joint or otherwise.
By way of example, I reached out to former longtime NFL linebacker and (mostly) long snapper Steve DeOssie, who always brings a measure of levelheadedness to these types of then-versus-now discussions. He played 12 seasons in the NFL between 1984 and 1995 with the Cowboys, Giants, Jets and Patriots. He played for the likes of Tom Landry, Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick. He has a Super Bowl ring. He’s also the father of Zak DeOssie, who played 13 seasons in the NFL, so the old man isn’t one of those today’s-game-sucks grumps.
“When I was with the Cowboys, we had training camp in Thousand Oaks (Calif.),” DeOssie said. “The Rams were nearby and we’d have joint sessions with them. Scuffles would break out here and there, but they never amounted to anything. And there weren’t many people watching.
“These days,” DeOssie said, “you have a lot of fans. You have cameras from 12 different TV stations. And if you’re a player and you think you’re getting pushed around by someone, you’re not going to let them make a little (baby) out of you in front of all those people.
“It used to be you’d just let it go, or you’d remember it and maybe settle up some other time,” he said. “Now you feel like you almost have to get up and do something.”
Steve Grogan, who quarterbacked the Patriots from 1975 to 1990, agreed.
“There were some joint practice sessions, but there just wasn’t much attention being paid to the two teams doing the practicing,” Grogan said. “Mostly, everyone got along. Every once in a while, some pushing and shoving would take place, but that was about it.”
The very angry NFL took note of what went down between the Giants and Lions and fined each team $200,000. In a stern tsk-tsking, NFL HQ said: “All NFL clubs were reminded in a memo last month that fighting and unprofessional conduct at joint practices would not be tolerated.”
The guessing here is that NFL Network, and every other network, isn’t overwhelmed with grief by what took place between the Giants and Lions. But, yes, the league is correct in asserting that “fighting and unprofessional conduct at joint practices would not be tolerated,” even if there’s a cheap joke to be made that fighting and unprofessional conduct should be limited to the regular season.
Of course, fighting at training camp isn’t limited to joint practices. During a Seattle Seahawks practice Wednesday, receiver DK Metcalf swung a helmet at one of his own teammates, hitting him in the head. Good heavens.
GO DEEPER
DK Metcalf swings helmet at teammate’s head
But if we can agree that football is a brutal, barbaric sport — which it is — we should always be looking for ways to protect the players. New rules keep getting put into play with that very goal in mind, but it’s still a game being played by very big people who can run very fast. Plus, the NFL continues to tweak the schedule with more games — and more games on short rest.
So, no, players shouldn’t fight during joint practices. Or to put it a better way, maybe the NFL just shouldn’t have joint practices at all, if only to remove the chance someone might twist an ankle and lose a season, or a career. Remember, pro football players have a short shelf life. And when they’re out, they’re replaced, and sometimes forgotten.
Advantages to joint practices? As DeOssie correctly points out: “Each team gets two practices for the price of one. On offense and defense, you get more reps.”
Coaches get more one-on-one time with players, which leads to improved talent evaluation. And with fewer preseason games than in days of old, joint practice sessions fill some of that void. Joint practices also provide teams an opportunity to tune up their scouting techniques. And to look at all this from a very human perspective, it doesn’t hurt to break up the monotony.
The cons? No need to snooze you with arguments that can be easily debated. I’ll leave it with the fighting and the risk of injury. And while the fights may get talked about in the moment, it’s all social media gruel.
I hate to stoop to the obvious here, but the obvious says it best. And it was Allen Iverson who did the saying: We’re talking about practice.
Well, joint practice. But you get the idea.
(Photo of Malik Nabers: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)