Titans training camp turned into a disciplinary hearing on Tuesday morning after Jeffery Simmons threw a punch early in a team drill and got banished to work alone on a side field with a strength coach for the rest of practice, according to Adam Schefter.
All-Pro defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons threw a punch early in a team drill Tuesday morning and spent the rest of the Tennessee Titans' practice working on a side field with a strength coach. More via @AP: https://t.co/fhUemns5Ru
Simmons is not some fringe roster guy you bury on the back field and move on from. He's a 4-time Pro Bowler and the anchor of Tennessee's defensive line, the guy the Titans paid $94 million over 4 years back in 2023 to keep as the centerpiece up front. When your best interior defender is the one getting pulled out of a live drill, that's not a minor camp scuffle, that's a story.
Head coach Robert Saleh didn't dance around it afterward, laying out the team's stance in blunt terms: throw a punch and you're gone, no exceptions, whether it's a game or a walkthrough.
Saleh's line about the policy applying "same thing with practice" as it does in games is the real headline here. It's a zero-tolerance stance, and applying it to your own All-Pro sends a message to the rest of the roster that nobody gets a pass, star power included. This isn't the first time Simmons has been at the center of a camp dust-up either — he was part of a padded-practice scrum with quarterback Cameron Ward last summer after Ward celebrated a touchdown in his face, so tempers boiling over in Titans camp drills isn't exactly new territory for him.
What matters now is whether this becomes a one-day story or a recurring issue for a defense that needs Simmons on the field, not on a side field running conditioning drills by himself. Camp fights happen every August around the league, but getting yanked from team drills under a stated ejection policy is a notch more serious than the usual shoving match. Worth watching how Saleh handles the next padded session and whether Simmons is back in the mix with the starters or still working solo.