OWINGS MILLS, MD — At first, the bodies tangle. Somebody throws a punch. Then what was a couple of individuals fighting turns into a sea of two jerseys coming together in the middle of an open field, a scene ripped from medieval warfare.
Except this was 2025 Baltimore Ravens training camp, featuring the Indianapolis Colts in a joint practice Tuesday before the two teams face one another in their first preseason game on Thursday.
For a moment, it was a literal slugfest. During a special teams period, with both sides going all-out, Baltimore’s Keyon Martin and the Colts’ Tyler Goodson started shoving each other after they’d ran down the field to cover and block a punt return, respectively. Martin pushed late, Goodson responded, and that was all Ravens second-year cornerback Nate Wiggins needed to see to insert himself, apparently.
Wiggins darted off the sideline and began unleashing uppercuts to the facemask of Goodson. In a flash, both sidelines cleared, whistles blared and the futile effort to break up the fighting began. Eventually, everything calmed down. Practice continued. The specter of another skirmish did too. Nothing materialized despite the heightened tensions, however.
Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said the message to his team after the fight would be the same it was going into the joint practice: play it like a game.
‘And we did, 99 percent of the time, but we didn’t on that play,’ Harbaugh said.
Video shooting wasn’t permitted during most of Tuesday’s practice including when the fight happened.
Harbaugh, Colts head coach Shane Steichen and Colts general manager Chris Ballard all agreed afterward, according to Steichen, that these training-camp squabbles usually occur on special teams and almost always have the same culprit: the gunners, the players who run the length of the field on punts.
‘You can pretty much chalk it up, predict it, because it’s one of those full-field, competitive drills,’ Harbaugh said. ‘But it should be a learning experience opportunity for our team, too. You don’t have to throw a punch.’
‘I thought the guys handled it good,’ Steichen told reporters after practice. ‘You never want to see a fight. We always talk about that in the meetings. ‘We’re not fighting.’ And obviously one skirmish broke out there, but thought the guys handled it well and everyone broke it up and we went back to practice.’
Wiggins had to sit out the rest of practice and watched through a glass window from the Ravens’ facility.
At least his teammates were excited.
‘I heard Nate was slugging somebody or something,’ defensive lineman Nnamdi Madubuike said after practice. ‘But it was crazy.
‘I was far away.’
Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson knows that if a fight breaks out, the camera will find a way to be pointed at him. So he makes sure to keep his distance as well.
‘I’m chilling,’ the two-time MVP said, ‘… but I feel like our guys held their own.’
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