CORTLAND -- And on the fourth day, there was anger.
The Jets' sixth full training-camp practice in four days, for a frantic few minutes yesterday morning at SUNY Cortland, morphed into a full-on WWE exhibition.
Three spirited skirmishes broke out during a physical 9-on-7 drill, and it left players buzzing afterward.
"This was our first real practice," Jets linebacker Bart Scott crowed.
"I like it," defensive end Marques Douglas said. "That's football. It's not a place for women and children. Guys are really eager to hit someone else at this point. It's always exciting when you have some heated battles out there. It makes the day go by a whole lot faster.
"Battles will happen out on the field, but we leave it on the field. When we go to the locker room, we're all friends."
Coach Rex Ryan didn't seem all that bothered by the extracurricular activity.
"We had a little Rock-'em Sock-'em Robots out there," Ryan joked. "That always makes things interesting. This time of year, we've been through a few days . . . those things happen."
Ryan joked that he spoke to the players about "rules of engagement."
"The No. 1 thing is that when you break up fights there's an art to doing it," he said. "You want offensive guys pulling off defensive players and defensive players pulling off offensive players. The reason you do that is so your buddy can get another shot in on somebody."
The first shots in the 9-on-7 drill came between running back Thomas Jones and safety James Ihedigbo, and it quickly turned into an all-out team scrum with players breaking it up. Jones ran toward the right sideline and was met with an Ihedigbo hit he didn't like -- and immediately took some wild swings at him.
"Maybe James gave him a little love tap that Thomas didn't appreciate," Douglas said.
"It's 100 percent real," Ihedigbo said when questioned about the level of agitation. "There's really no faking that. It's football. We're out here getting better, we're out here playing hard, and we're out pushing each other to get better."
Left guard Brandon Moore said the offense "came in with a little more fire in that first drill."
Right tackle Damien Woody said that, after the Jones-Ihedigbo dust-up, "It seemed like every other play there was a fight breaking out."
Indeed, shortly after the Jones-Ihedigbo bout, defensive tackle Howard Green took a swipe at fullback Brock Christopher at the end of a play, and that became a short scuffle during which mild-mannered linebacker Vernon Gholston tried to kick another teammate in the pile.
Finally, defensive back Ahmad Carroll and tackle Nevin McCaskill got into it briefly, though that ended in a mock fight with several players, including cornerback Darrelle Revis and linebacker Marques Murrell, playfully jumping onto the pile.
Ryan believes things like what occurred yesterday help the team unity.
"I sense that there's a lot of pride in the particular units, and what you're going to see is pride in the whole team, so when we play an opponent, you're going to see a unified team," he said.
Source: http://www.nypost.com/seven/08042009/sports/jets/jet_fists_are_flyin_182858.htm