The Tennessee Titans' coaching staff ejected star defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons from Tuesday's practice after he threw a punch during a skirmish with right tackle JC Latham. Simmons spent the remainder of the day working on a side field with a strength coach.
Early in team drills, the offensive and defensive lines converged in a post-play tussle. Simmons and center Austin Schlottmann were initially involved in the tangle, then the former took a swing at Latham in the middle of a scrum, according to ESPN. Assistant defensive line coach Tanzel Smart stepped in and pulled Simmons out of the fight, then coach Robert Saleh stopped practice, gathered the players and held a talk to cool them down.
Simmons was the only player ejected from practice as Saleh made an example out of his crossing the line.
"Our policy is if you throw a punch, you're ejected in the game," Saleh said after practice. "Same thing with practice, if you throw a punch out at practice. But rather than go to the locker room, he went to the other fields. He still got his work in. So the projected reps and the work that he would have gotten in, he got in off to the side."
This is not the first time Simmons and Latham went after each other in training camp. The two were at the center of a fight in 2024 on the first day of full-pad practice, and while then-coach Brian Callahan said the team would not accept fighting at practice, he did not eject Simmons like his successor did on Tuesday.
"It's the second day of pads," Saleh said. "It's hot. It's muggy. You're expecting it, especially with the way the O-line and D-line get after it. It's just a reminder that we've got work to do. It's OK. I've got brothers. We fight all the time, but at the end of the day, we still take care of one another, make sure we're getting the work done we need to get."
Simmons is the face of a new-look defensive front which Saleh reconstructed ahead of his first year as the Titans' coach. He returned to the unit in 2026 on the heels of a career year in which he earned a first-team All-Pro selection and made his fourth Pro Bowl in five years.
The highly renowned tenacity Simmons brings to both the pass rush and run-stopping scheme on the interior defensive line spilled over into extracurricular activity at practice, and while Saleh does not condone the level to which his star defensive tackle raised the skirmish, he said he does approve of Simmons' competitive drive.
"Our O-line and D-lines, we want them playing with an edge," Saleh said. "We want them to toe the line. We just gotta learn how to draw the penalty, not give the penalty. We're always going to toe the line of violence. We're always going to toe the line of being aggressive. Call it instigating if you want; it's just the nature of who we're going to be. But we've gotta be disciplined enough to make sure that we always find our way back to the huddle without giving the other team freebies."
