FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Penix Jr. was involved in a scuffle during a joint practice Wednesday against the Tennessee Titans.
After completing a long pass to wide receiver Ray-Ray McCloud III, Penix and Titans defenders were talking trash with each other and things boiled over and got physical. Players from both teams ran in from the sidelines. Penix ended up in the middle of a pile and seemed to be thrown down to the grass.
“I don’t know where I was at in it,” Penix said. “It was a lot of people. I knew I was down there somewhere. I wasn’t the only one, though.”
Falcons wide receiver Drake London had to be pulled away from the skirmish by teammates. McCloud and several other Falcons players came to Penix’s aid.
“I’m glad they did, because obviously that’s not something that we want to be doing in practice,” Penix said afterward. “We want to get all reps in, get that good work in. But it went how it went. But to see the team have my back and they were there, make sure they protect me. A lot of guys asked me if I was good, and it was good to know that those guys had my back.”
Penix was uninjured in the scrum. He came back out for the next series. Tensions flared again one play later with Falcons offensive linemen Kaleb McGary and Chris Lindstrom getting into it with Titans. There was another scuffle shortly after on the adjacent field where the Falcons defense was going up against the Titans offense.
“[Penix] started it on that one, on Team One,” said Titans linebacker Arden Key. “But again, those guys in Atlanta, they protected the quarterback, which they were supposed to do. O-line came in, did what they did and we wasn’t allowing that, but that’s what they were supposed to do.”
When asked if his immediate reaction to the Penix situation was panic, Falcons quarterback coach DJ Williams said, “absolutely.” Williams said Penix is competitive and has always told him he’s a football player first. But Williams said then Penix has to realize that he’s “the CEO” of the offense and has to run the show. He can’t risk his body in something like that.
“Obviously, you don’t want that, but I take some positive out of it,” Williams said. “Like you saw the guys take up for him and I think that speaks to his leadership and who he is in that locker room. Obviously as coaches we’re upstairs, they’re downstairs. We don’t really see a lot, but obviously he has a relationship and the trust of the guys because everybody ran to his defense. So, I think that’s a good thing for the Falcons.”
Penix said he kind of blacked out. He joked that it was “somebody else out there.”
“I don’t really do too much talking until somebody say something to me and maybe I’ll want to, ‘OK, I threw a touchdown, now what y’all talking about,'” Penix said. “And then I guess not everybody takes that the right way. I think that’s all it was. They probably looked at me as just the quarterback, [that] I wasn’t that type of person. But I’m from Tampa. I’m from Dade City. … “There’s a respect part about it. We’re all playing, we’re all competing at a high level, but when disrespect comes in, it’s like, ‘All right, this ain’t football no more.”
ESPN’s Turron Davenport contributed to this report.
