Is fighting during the training camp necessary? It’s not, but it’s common. Some want to stand their ground and some fight because it’s a morale-building exercise (at least to them). The Washington Commanders are no stranger to training camp fights and a lot of situations got chippy during the Ron Rivera era. But that’s about to change with Dan Quinn in charge.

The new Commanders’ HC has strict no-no policy when it comes to fighting. There came a time when fights stopped happening in training camps at Flower Branch. Cody Chaffins of Fox asked Matt Ryan about it, and he said that the Falcons at the time had a “good brotherhood” which keeps them from fighting. Quinn is carrying the same culture to the Commanders now.

The hosts of the Washington Commanders podcast spoke about how training camp had started, and situations might get heated sooner or later. Though Logan Paulse thinks fights are a good thing, he believes that Dan Quinn is not going to allow it. “If you got in a fight down in Atlanta, WATCH OUT, no fighting,” said Paulsen of Quinn’s tenure at Atlanta.

Before Paulsen said anything about Dan Quinn, Santana Moss shared his own POV of the Washington head coach. “He’s [Quinn] is going to tell those guys like look, we don’t need you guys out of control because you got to tame your guys, so they don’t see us going at each other.”

It was 2015 and Dan Quinn’s first head coaching gig with the Atlanta Falcons. That was also the time when HBO was doing a “Hard Knocks” season with the Atlanta Falcons. The Falcons were in a practice session with the Titans and Joe Hawley got involved in a skirmish with Michael Griffin, Titans’ Safety at the time, and they didn’t know they were being recorded.

This didn’t stop here because later, Kroy Biermann and Jake Matthews got in a fight, and it served as the trailer for “Hard Knocks.” But the players learned a lesson that day and learned to adjust to Quinn’s personality. Its dog eat dog out there but the players at the same time are like brothers. That’s what Dan Quinn pointed out.

“I think the biggest thing is we want to keep our poise,” Quinn said. “Part of keeping poise is there are going to be times when you’re going to be furious at a guy, but part of having that poise is knowing ‘I’ve got another play to go.’ I think it’s kind of going the other way, in terms of practice. …Do the tempers get out of control and we get sideways sometimes when we’re competing so hard? Yeah. But it’s really coming back to that poise.”

Fighting during the camp might be a necessary evil for some people. On one hand, it prepares you for what’s about to come in the regular season. On the other, you might end up getting injured or lose the team chemistry that you had with the other players. However, something happened last year where the DB Benjamin St. Juste threw caution to the wind and put the TE Cole Turner on the ground and the WR Terry McLaurin didn’t like it at all.

“Can’t do that shit to your own teammate, bro!” That’s what McLaurin said to St. Juste. But it wasn’t anything serious. It happened in August last year when Ron Rivera was in charge of the team. But the thing is, training camp scuffles aren’t anything new for Rivera and turns out he likes it when the training camp gets “chippy.”

Ron Rivera’s stance on aggressiveness

The sounds of helmets clicking, bodies thudding is a part of the experience, even during training camp. As mentioned earlier, fights are a necessary evil on the football field. It keeps the team’s fired up and teaches players an important lesson: Don’t let it get to your head.

“This is about building the grit & the toughness. We lost our poise. A little immaturity showed. We have to learn how to handle it. …Great learning experience…kind of day you’d expect [3rd padded day; 5th straight practice],” is what Ron Rivera had to say about the experience and added, “It’s just like, I have hot sauce in my bag, lets pull it out, spray it on each other and get a little excited about it. That’s exactly what happened. I’m glad it did.”

While Rivera is doing this from the perspective of making his team better, Dan Quinn doesn’t see it like that at all. What Quinn brings to the table is a “fun as hell” training camp where the players work really hard and have fun too. As mentioned earlier, Rivera and Quinn are different when it comes to handling their teams.

The Washington Commanders, for the last 3 years, haven’t been able to top the NFC East, let alone the division. Maybe it’s time to change that with a new quarterback with an insane talent and the support system around him. Quinn is his own man focused on the “brotherhood” aspect of being a team and won’t pull out the hot sauce just to make things exciting.