The Falcoholic
The Tennessee Titans remained guests of the Atlanta Falcons, at Flowery Branch, for another day during the team’s second joint practice together on Wednesday.
After the Falcons looked to have decisively won yesterday’s practice, today was a lot more even as the Titans bounced back both on offense and on defense.
There were no one on ones. The teams did their walkthroughs, had their routes against air and then immediately went right into 7-on-7 mode, with plenty of scrimmage taking place today and plenty of emotion coming out.
Here are my notes and observations from the second day of the joint practice.
After the Falcons got the better of them on Day 1, it felt like the Titans made a concerted effort to come out as the much more aggressive and physical team on Wednesday morning. There were an uncharacteristically plentiful amount of flags thrown against Tennessee players in the early 7-on-7 red zone portion as they were making early contact and being very handsy.
On the second play of the 11-on-11 portion, frustration and trash talk escalated into an all out brawl. Michael Penix Jr. hit Ray Ray McCloud on a home run touchdown pass down the field and a few seconds later bodies were hitting the floor as the Falcons offense and the Titans defense went after one another.
Penix was the main guy involved for the Falcons, as he ended up at the bottom of the pile. In the post practice press conference, Penix said some words were said to him as he was celebrating the touchdown pass and called it a matter of respect. The rest of the Falcons offense was very quick to back their quarterback up. Drake London had to be pulled away at the end of it all.
Just a couple of plays later, the offense and defense came together for a second scuffle, one where Kaleb McGary was directly involved and lost his helmet. Not too much time passed before Henry Black took exception to a push from behind in punt coverage drills and got into a shoving match with a Titans player, as both special teams units converged.
This was the second push from behind in a row, after DeMarcco Hellams suffered one before limping off the field (he came back shortly afterward). For the rest of practice it looked like players from both teams would give a little bit of a late shove at the end of many plays.
As for the on the field portion of the day, Michael Penix struggled with his accuracy in 11-on-11 after that early touchdown to McCloud. I tracked him going an overall 8-15 with plenty of miscues, and it’s fair to question if the fight and the added Titans aggression had something to do with it.
Two out the next seven completions would have gone for 10+ yards in the 11-on-11, with the rest being short connections,...
