On Monday, Titans quarterback Cam Ward and Titans defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons got into a scuffle during practice. After it happened, Simmons took to Twitter to blame reporters for “blow[ing] something up that happened at practice.”
On Tuesday, Simmons addressed reporters for the first time since it happened.
“Hands off the quarterback,” Simmons said. “Everybody on this team know. Everybody in the locker room know. I love the hell out of my guys. Shit happened at practice. You know, people on the outside, you guys, y’all blowing [are] it up. Shouldn’t get blowed up.
“At training camp, tempers flare. Move on and end that day. You know, can’t touch the quarterback. They’re the same thing. If we at joint practice and somebody touch our quarterback, trust me, I’m gonna be the first one in there. So I respect the hell out of our offense for having their quarterback back — having our quarterback back.
“But at the end of the day, you know, it’s football. We, you know — offensive line, defensive line, trenches. It’s hot. Tempers flare. We all are tied. At the end of the day, we family. We moved on from it. We’re not gonna keep talking about it each and every day. It happened yesterday, we came back to work as a team. Yesterday, we left it on the field. Came back, got the corrections, moved on. So I’m done talking about it. That’s it. Any football questions, you know, that’s that.”
One of the reporters followed immediately with this: “So hands off the quarterback. You put your hands on the quarterback. And it’s our fault?”
Said Simmons, “Anybody got a football question?”
“That’s a football question,” the reporter said.
At the end of the day, it’s a good sign for the Titans. Ward is intense. He’ll back down to no one. Sure, he did his “Zombieland” celebration, which reportedly prompted Simmons to give Ward a two-handed shove to the facemask. They then had to be separated.
Simmons’s preference to not talk about it is understandable. He was in the wrong. He knows it. Hands off the quarterback.
Simmons also knows that Ward is the present and the future of the team. The guy who could lead the Titans out of the haze of irrelevance.
Quarterbacks need skill, and they need swagger. Ward seems to have both. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the rest of the league gets a taste of it in games that count.
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