You see it all over the league when two NFL teams hold joint practices together.
Brawls. Fights. Melees. And then the inevitable injuries.
Things got very ugly between the Texans and Redskins earlier this summer and they were so bad between the Cowboys and Rams earlier this week they had to cut practice short.
In 1986, when the Eagles and Lions held joint workouts at the Lions' complex in Rochester, Michigan, a full-scale riot broke out between the two teams while Buddy Ryan stood there smirking and twirling his whistle. Safety Andre Waters was involved in at least half a dozen fights during the week.
"I'm not excited about it," then-Lions coach Darryl Rogers told Inquirer Eagles beat writer Angelo Cataldi back then. "We came to work. The cheap shots … when you're just working, you don't expect that. You expect to get work. You don't expect to get clotheslined."
Chip Kelly and John Harbaugh are doing everything they can to make sure none of that happens this week.
With the Ravens at the NovaCare Complex this week for three days of joint practices with the Eagles leading up to their preseason game Saturday night, both coaches emphasized to their players that fights will simply not be tolerated.
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“I felt we did a great job last year with San Francisco in terms of keeping it about business, treating one another with respect,” Harbaugh said. “There was no extracurricular stuff right after the play. We’re counting on the Eagles to do that, and we’ll be emphasizing that to our guys as well.”
The Eagles held joint practices the last two years with the Patriots, two years ago at the NovaCare Complex and last year in Foxboro, Massachusetts.
There were no real fights at those workouts, and the one time there almost was — when Cary Williams and Patriots rookie receiver Aaron Dobson began shoving each other two years ago — Kelly and Bill Belichick pulled them both out of practice for the rest of the day.
“Really, when you practice together, you’re like a team,” Harbaugh said. “You have to function as a team in a sense, and that’s what we tried to do last year with San Francisco. We’ll try to accomplish that again.”
When the Ravens practiced last year with the 49ers, Harbaugh was working with his brother Jim, then the 49ers’ head coach.
Harbaugh has never worked with Kelly, but he spent nine years on Andy Reid’s staff with Pat Shurmur, now the Eagles’ offensive coordinator. So there is a healthy respect there, and both coaches said they’re confident players from both teams will keep things clean this week.
“We kind of make our statements up front, we’ve said we just don’t want it to happen,” Shurmur said. “We’re going to expect both teams to be professional and guard against it.
“We like to think we’re not going to have any of it, but we’ve certainly talked about it. That’s part of what you do when you plan to practice together or train together.
“You set the schedule, and then you set the ground rules, we’re going to do this in this period, and certainly the over-riding part of it is we’re all going to try to be professional and get better.”
Harbaugh said he and Kelly set ground rules for the three days of practice, and it’s all common sense stuff that most NFL teams follow in any practice.
“Yes, the natural agreements that we have in all of our practices will be in place there [this week],” he said. “There’s no cut blocking, there’s no finishing blocks, taking guys to the ground.
“There’s no pulling, tugging, grabbing, twisting. Any of that kind of stuff that you would normally have at practice, I’m sure we’ll have [the same rules] with those guys.”