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Sauce Gardner recalls in-practice fight with Denzel Mims

profilephotocropby:Suzanne Halliburton•07/19/23•

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sauce gardner
Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

The subject was Hard Knocks and whether Sauce Gardner, the super chatty cornerback with the New York Jets, would be a good character in the NFL reality show.

He’s got the charisma. But does he have the other attributes needed to dominate a story line? Like, does he ever fight on the field?

Yes, Sauce Gardner remembers a fight, emphasis on the singular. And he recalled all the non-details this week during an episode of The Pivot Podcast hosted by ESPN’s Ryan Clark.

The fight involved Denzel Mims, his Jets teammate and the former Baylor Bears star receiver. So it was the DBs against the wideouts, two units where egos go to thrive.

“We’d be talking, then he did something,” Sauce Gardner said. “He did something that was cheap to one of my teammates. and I just ran onto the field.”

It all sounds very minor. Gardner promised he could stay chill during the filming for Hard Knocks.

“Y’all are going to like me,” he promised. “I’ll be calm.. I’ll talk on the field, I’ll talk a little trash.”

But he said tempers do escalate in preseason camp. “You’ve been to training camp for a little minute, waking up, seeing the same person extra early in the morning,” he said. “You develop this little anger, like ‘yo’ bro, why am I looking at you again?’ It feels like we, we just here. I close my eyes and it’s day two of training camp. Then it gets to day 10 or something. It just gets crazy.”

Jets receiver Denzel Mims, seen here scoring a touchdown, got on Sauce Gardner’s nerves last year. The two got into a fight at practice, Garnder said. (Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports

Sauce Gardner and the rest of his Jets teammates report for training camp today, with practice starting Thursday. The Jets and Browns open up the preseason game slate, Aug. 3, when the teams play in the Hall of Fame game.

The Jets haven’t made it to the playoffs since 2010. But they’re in the middle of the NFL conversation as training camps start to open across the league. Aaron Rodgers moved from the Packers to the Jets in a pre-draft trade. So Rodgers’ presence lured a lot of cameras the Jets way in the weeks since the trade.

Plus, the Jets have players like Sauce Gardner, the All-Pro who earned defensive rookie of the year honors in 2022. He lived up to the expectations of the fourth pick of last year’s draft.

We’re betting the Hard Knocks cameras will be pleased with what he does.