Tennessee Titans get physical in first night practice
By Les Bailey
Tennessee Titans second-year offensive lineman told the press after the first night work-out of the season that if they concentrated on the fights, they wouldn’t do justice to a great practice.
The Titans got the crowd going under the lights Monday night and will head into an off-day on Tuesday. The team goes back to work on Wednesday in a closed session.
So let’s get to the fights first! You had to know it would be the receivers against the defensive back first after the late shot Phillip Supernaw took at a defensive back on Sunday.
Wide receiver Deon Long got into it with defensive back, Cody Riggs after some physical play between receiver Josh Stewart and safety Da’Norris Searcy.
As reported by John Glennon from the Tennessean, the fight escalated when Michael Griffin and several db’s jumped in and Griffin threw Stewart to the ground.
"“One of the dudes roughed up one of my wide receivers, so I sort of had it in the back of my mind,” Long said with a smile. “So I had the wide receiver drill, and I kind of got at (Riggs). He tried to take a cheap shot at me, so I took some shots at him first."
Two of the other scraps involved safety, Damion Stafford. Stafford said he was just trying to break up the the bout between Stewart and Searcy, and just got caught up in the melee.
Stafford was involved in another incident with tight end, Craig Stevens after he hit tight end Chase Coffman pretty hard in the back during a play.
Defensive lineman Karl Klug thought about getting into the fracus while locked up with offensive lineman, Taylor Lewan but didn’t.
Brian Schwenke said in a later interview that he avoided the conflicts, saying they were only little-guy fights.
Titansonline senior editor, Jim Wyatt said in his report that coaches and most of the players dismissed the scuffles as just being part of football.
The “Monday Night Fights” got the crowd of over 2000 people excited at Saint Thomas Sports Park, but tight end Delanie Walker told ESPN reporter, Paul Kuharsky that this kind of thing would never happen in a game. People would be ejected.
"“In the games you don’t want that to happen because people will get ejected, but for us to do that as a team and just help our brothers out, it’s exciting,” tight endDelanie Walker said. “When that stuff happens, we don’t carry it on (beyond that). At the end of the day we’re just having fun, we’re competing, it’s going to get physical."
Ken Whisenhunt told Kuharsky that the team was geared up, and the fights were not unusual.
"“I mean, it’s training camp, right? And everyone is a little juiced up because of the crowd,” he said. “It was a good atmosphere under the lights. They had a little bit more time off between these practices, so it’s not unusual. The unusual thing is that Karl Klug wasn’t involved in a lot of them.”"
The Titans are in the process of trying to erase the memory of a 2-14 season last year, and most of the players have come to camp with a chip on their shoulders and want to change that stat for 2015.
I expect to see more as players get tired of the training camp grind, and start fighting for jobs as the first pre-season game gets closer.
Bring it on!
Next: Titans training camp: stock up-stock down