Matt Rhule addresses multiple fights at joint practice with Patriots

Ahead of their preseason game, the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers chose to hold joint practices. On back-to-back days, fights broke out between the two teams. Now, fights do happen in camp, but these were brawls between the two teams that led to player ejections. Now, Panthers coach Matt Rhule has addressed these fights.

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“It’s just unfortunate that a day of so much good football–and I know a lot of it will be about what happened–the decision of one or two guys impacts a lot of different people,” Matt Rhule said. “My thoughts are with the woman that was hurt over there, hoping that she’s OK. … And obviously we sent Kenny (Robinson) off the field.”

There, Matt Rhule references a fan who was hit by a helmet during the fight and later determined to be alright. He also mentions that Kenny Robinson was ejected from practice. It was Robinson’s second injury in as many days. Following a fight with Kristian Wilkerson that got both players ejected during Tuesday’s drill, he injured Wilkerson in a non-full contact drill Wednesday. As he taunted Wilkerson on the ground, a fight broke out.

That was just one of many fights in the last two days. Another fight broke out when Christian McCaffrey was tackled hard. This came after multiple fights broke out over apparent trash talking.

“I didn’t really see the hit, but I did see him standing over the player. That’s not how we want to practice. Things happen in football, there were some good, clean hits. But we don’t stand over somebody and taunt them. It can affect their livelihood, so we sent him off. The officials sent Chuba (Hubbard) off, I don’t know what Chuba did, but the officials sent Chuba off, said he threw a punch,” Matt Rhule said.

Both of these teams need to take as much advantage of practice as possible. There are also a lot of benefits to joint practices. However, those are all wiped out and you’re only hurting your team by taking up practice time with fighting. It’s so important that Matt Rhule was unwilling to rule out cutting Kenny Robinson over the fights.

“Two days now that practice was affected by a guy. We’ll have to talk about it.”