The Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints escaped their violent joint practice on Tuesday without suffering significant injuries, but they did not walk away totally unscathed. "The NFL has confirmed that the Cowboys and Saints have each been fined $500,000 for the actions that took place at the joint practice between the teams earlier this week," the NFL said in a statement, as relayed by Ian Rapoport on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday. "The Competition Committee has made sportsmanship – including at joint practices – a point of emphasis over the past several years.
All clubs were reminded by memo prior to training camp of their responsibility in preventing unsportsmanlike behavior at joint practices that has the potential to result in injury." On Tuesday, longtime Cowboys reporter Clarence Hill Jr. reported there had been seven fights at the Cowboys-Saints joint practice. "A little chippy," Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer told reporters after practice. "Not the way that we like to do business, gotta be better, but I gotta look at the film.
We're certainly not gonna take [expletive] from anybody, but again, it was chippy on both sides. Like I said, I want our guys to play on the edge without going over the edge." Schottenheimer confirmed that linebacker Donovan Ezeiruaku was removed from practice because "it sounds like he might have thrown a punch." Meanwhile, New Orleans Saints head coach Kellen Moore said, "Obviously, you guys saw all the chippiness of it. Not the ideal flow of the joint practice, but we got the work that we needed." Watch clips from the Cowboys-Saints fights below.
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