Cowboys-Saints Joint Practice Erupts Into Six Fights, Reviving Push for NFL Fines

Tuesday's joint practice between the Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints was supposed to be a tune-up. Instead it turned into a slugfest.

At least six separate fights broke out during the session, according to Newsweek. Helmets came off. Punches flew. One physical altercation reportedly included a wrestling-style takedown that drove a player into the turf, according to reports from the practice.

Both head coaches admitted afterward that things got out of control. Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer said he and Saints coach Kellen Moore had discussed calling off the practice entirely if things escalated further.

"We kind of had agreed that if a couple of other things happened, we would cancel it, but they worked through it," Schottenheimer said, according to Newsweek. "Again, they settled into it, but again, there's a discipline element to playing this football game, and unfortunately we didn't handle that very well today."

Florio's Fix: Fine the Players

Physical joint practices aren't unusual. Two teams meeting for the first time in a competitive setting almost always generates some pushing and shoving. That's part of training camp.

But Tuesday's brawl crossed a line, and it pushed Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio to call for direct league discipline. Florio argued the NFL should treat joint-practice fights the same way it treats fights during games.

"The NFL should exercise jurisdiction over joint practices, issuing fines (and other discipline, when necessary) for any fights that occur," Florio wrote, according to Newsweek and NBC Sports, which both carried his column. "That would end it. At a minimum, it would give cooler heads a very good reason to prevail, if/when things heat up."

NBC Sports made the underlying argument even sharper. Punches, kicks, and helmet swings thrown after a play has already ended aren't football violence, the outlet argued, they're "basically workplace violence." And if the teams themselves aren't going to police it, NBC Sports said the league should.

There's a legal angle here too. NBC Sports raised the possibility that if a player is seriously injured in one of these brawls, a personal-injury lawyer could argue the NFL failed to eliminate a foreseeable, preventable workplace hazard. It's straightforward liability exposure for a league that already spends heavily defending itself against player-safety litigation.

Under the NFL's current Collective Bargaining Agreement, the league already has authority to fine players for fighting during joint practices. It just doesn't typically use it that way.

Historically, the NFL has gone after organizations, not individual players, when these brawls happen. The clearest recent example: in 2024, the Detroit Lions and New York Giants were each fined $200,000 after multiple fights broke out during their joint practices, according to Newsweek. Players involved in that incident included the Giants' Malik Nabers, Daniel Jones, and Dru Phillips, along with the Lions' Amon-Ra St. Brown, Penei Sewell, and Kerby Joseph. None of those players were individually fined.

That's the gap Florio wants closed. Team fines are treated as a cost of doing business, and coaches can shrug them off as the league's problem rather than an individual accountability issue. Direct player fines change the incentive structure. If a player knows he's personally on the hook, he thinks twice before throwing a punch after the whistle.

There's a reasonable counterargument here, too. Football is a violent, emotional sport, and joint practices exist precisely to let teams find their edge against unfamiliar opponents before the games count. Some level of chippiness is the point. Overcorrecting with heavy individual fines risks softening the competitive atmosphere that makes camp battles useful in the first place. Coaches, not league office bureaucrats, arguably know best when a scuffle is a normal part of training camp intensity versus a genuine safety problem.

Still, six fights in one practice, a violent takedown, and both coaches admitting they considered canceling the session entirely is not routine chippiness. It's a breakdown in discipline that both Schottenheimer and Moore acknowledged publicly.

The NFL is a little past the halfway point of its 2026 preseason joint practice schedule, according to Newsweek. Whether these brawls keep piling up, and whether the league finally starts fining individual players instead of just writing checks against team accounts, remains an open question heading into the rest of camp.