It’s late July and it’s suffocatingly hot in most places in the country. Especially for the Atlanta Falcons, who hold their training camp in Flower Branch, GA. As you can probably guess, it’s super hot and humid and a rookie like, say, James Pearce, Jr. could be looking to make an early name for himself.
When it’s sweltering and players are tired and covered in tons of football gear, things can get testy. So, training camp skirmishes tend to happen and this weekend some of them went “a little too far,” according to Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich.
“We’re trying to develop a culture, a style of play for sure, and part of that is the violence with which we play and aggression, the urgency and all that,” Ulbrich said. “Today, at times, it went a little too far and we’ve got to learn how to manage that.
“You’re going to get agitated and, especially when you’re playing really good defense, the offense is going to get very agitated, so you’ve got to anticipate punches being thrown, things being said, people getting pushed. In those moments, you got to thrive and not retaliate and so it’s a good lesson to be learned today.”
No one really wants to say this, but sometimes camp dustups can be a good thing. You don’t want to go all Michael Westbrook and Stephen Davis on it, but sometimes some pushing and shoving can be healthy.
James Pearce is mixing it up in training camp
Ulbrich said that the key to controlling fights is to step in before actual hands are thrown. And on Sunday, there was a little bit of that.
The second of two first-round draft picks, Pearce was involved in a couple of fights with left guard Matthew Bergeron and later with right tackle Kaleb McGary.
It’s easy to tell the rookie to calm down, but right now, the Falcons’ defense could use a little bit of dog.
Still, Ulbrich thinks this could be a good learning experience for Pearce.
“He’s prideful as it gets,” Ulbrich said. “He loves this game. He’s got deep love for his teammates … and he wants to come out here and create a strong impression on everybody — and himself included — that he can do this. And you do this at a high level, and I think when you’re in that place of just every ounce of your body’s trying to prove who you are, sometimes it gets to that place where it can get a little wacky sometimes.
“His anger got the best of him a little bit and it is going to be a great learning experience for him.”
Falcons’ offensive line coach isn’t too worried about the fights
Offensive line coach Dwayne Ledford said these practices are similar to “off-roading in a nice truck.” You want to test it out and see what it can do, but you don’t want to wreck the truck.
“Yeah, we had a couple of crashes today,” Ledford said. “But the thing about these guys — I know this, I know how our locker room, the culture that we have here in this locker room — those guys, they’re going to shake it up. They know they got to get to work together and it’s going to take both of us. It’s kind of like what we said, man, if both sides of the ball are playing hard like that, it’s just going to make us on both sides that much better.”
The way the Falcons ended last year, the training camp intensity is probably a good thing. There are a lot of new faces on defense and they surely don’t want a repeat of last year’s 23rd-ranked unit.
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