Cleveland Browns fight at practice; run sprints as punishment

The Cleveland Browns have a crucial game coming up on Monday Night Football — especially for quarterbacks Brian Hoyer and Johnny Manziel who will be competing for the No. 1 job.

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But while there is a lot of pressure on Hoyer and Manziel to perform well, it appears that the rest of the team is getting antsy as well.

During Saturday’s practice session, the Browns players broke out into an on-field skirmish and head coach Mike Pettine was not very happy with how things went.

“I just thought it went a little too far,” Pettine said, via Pro Football Talk.

“I understand and have spoken on fights before. That’s going to happen sometimes. That’s the price of doing business, but I thought we got out of the realm of being good teammates. Also, I just think overall practice, to that point, I thought was a little too sloppy for my liking. It was kind of a culmination of the sloppiness and then the length of the fight.”

To punish the players and hold them accountable, Pettine made his team run wind sprints.

After that, it appeared to be business as usual.

“The thing I was pleased about was how they responded after,” Pettine said. “I thought they were sharp. They were focused. They practiced how they should, but I just told them after that we don’t need a traumatic event to kind of snap us back into place, that we need to be mature enough and professional enough to be able to handle tough circumstances and practice well.”

Hopefully Pettine’s team will continue to respond in the right way and put their best effort forward on Monday night — especially those players who are running out of time to make the roster.

With just three games to go, it is best to put all of that energy towards gameday and not towards a fight in practice.

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