With a visit from the Jacksonville Jaguars on the horizon, Mike Zimmer was alerted early this week to the multi-player fight that broke out at the only other NFL joint practice going on.
In Richmond, Virginia, where the Washington Redskins and New York Jets were scrimmaging against each other before their Thursday night preseason game, a simple Washington run to the right ended with punches thrown and a massive pile of players pushing and shoving.
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Shortly after, Zimmer got a call from Jaguars coach Doug Marrone and the two shared a similar sentiment.
“We’re really all about getting work done. We don’t want to get in any kind of conflicts like they apparently had in Washington,” Zimmer said.
Last year, the Jaguars took part in joint practices with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which also resulted in several skirmishes and included a punch thrown by Jags wide receiver Arrelious Benn, who’s no longer with the team.
The Vikings, meanwhile, have only participated in one joint practice under Zimmer, which came in 2016 in Cincinnati.
“They have done it quite a bit, so when they called me I just expressed my concerns that I don’t want this to be a fight or anything like that,” Zimmer said. “I want to go out there and try and get better.”
The Vikings practiced with the Bengals in 2016 in part because of Zimmer’s familiarity with that staff — and in part, Zimmer admitted this week, so that he could visit his ranch in northern Kentucky.
“That was the No. 1 reason,” Zimmer joked. “No, schematically everything was pretty similar defensively to both sides. We got a lot of good work done I thought that week. It was really, really hot and humid. I’m thinking back on it, but it’s always good when you get to go against (Bengals wide receiver) A.J. Green. We get to go against (Jaguars running back Leonard) Fournette this week. We’re not going to be pounding him or anything like that, but it’s good to see great players on the other side of the ball.”
Indeed, it’ll be a pair of Super Bowl hopefuls matching up against each other in this grinding part of training camp. Like the Vikings, the Jaguars were a win away from the Super Bowl before they lost to the New England Patriots in the AFC championship. The Vikings’ defense finished first in the NFL in points and yards against. The Jaguars finished second in the NFL in both stats.
So the teams became natural practice partners with their second preseason game on the schedule in Minnesota and the Vikings boasting a new practice facility capable of hosting another team. Zimmer admitted that he and Marrone don’t have a long relationship, though Zimmer’s son Adam, the Vikings’ linebackers coach, worked with Marrone with the New Orleans Saints from 2006-08. And Zimmer knows Tom Coughlin, the Jaguars’ vice president of football operations, pretty well, too, part of what made this week’s practices possible.
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They’ll prep for their noon game Saturday at U.S. Bank Stadium with afternoon practices Wednesday and Thursday at the Vikings’ new practice facility in Eagan. The Jaguars will use the locker room at the TCO Stadium on the facility’s campus and share the weight room with the Vikings. Each team will occupy two of the four grass fields for portions of the practice and meet on the same field at other points to scrimmage.
“I think it’ll be good work against a good football team that had a lot of success last year,” defensive coordinator George Edwards said. “For our guys to come out here and we’ve been working against our offense since we started, I think it’ll be a good change of pace. Definitely going to be good work against their personnel and schematics of what they try to do. We’re excited about it. For us, it’s still an evaluation to get out here and work the techniques and the fundamentals between each group. Just tie it all together that way. Rather than going against our offense, which we’ve kind of been going against all offseason and here at training camp, it’s kind of a break from that and working on something new schematically.”
The Jaguars will come to Minnesota without two of their top players though.
Dante Fowler Jr., a defensive end who was thrown out of joint practices against the Bucs last year for an altercation, was suspended for starting a fight with fellow defensive end Yannick Ngakoue after a practice Sunday. While that happened, cornerback Jalen Ramsey, who is widely seen as one of the top two corners in the NFL along with Xavier Rhodes, yelled obscenities to those who filmed the incident. Both Fowler Jr. and Ramsey were suspended from this week’s practices against the Vikings and the ensuing preseason game because of that.
“Whoever they bring, they bring, and whoever they don’t, they don’t,” Zimmer said. “We’re just going to go out and try to improve. Their defense is very similar to a lot of defenses that we’re going to face this year schematically, so I think that that will be good, especially for our offense. And they’re a downhill, power running football team, which is going to be good for our defense.”
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Zimmer’s emphasis for these two practices, though, is on clean football without the kind of fights that dominated highlight reels in Washington.
“The biggest thing is that we want to get work done against a good team,” Zimmer said. “It’s important that our guys know that we’re not going to put up with any trash talking, we’re not going to put up with any fighting. We’re not here for that, we’re here to get better. Hopefully our guys will know that, and they’ll have the same thing.”
(Top image: Mike Zimmer and Jaguars coach Doug Marrone have a message to their team for this week’s joint practices — keep it clean. Credit: Brad Rempel/USA TODAY Sports)
