The offensive guard of the Cleveland Browns, Joel Bitonio has recently made headline with his thoughts on the Super Bowl runners-up Philadelphia Eagles.
He mentioned that the Eagles took “cheap shots” towards their quarterback, Deshaun Watson during their recent joint practice.
#Browns Joel Bitonio said there were a few cheap shots by the #Eagles both ways in joint practices. Got chippy today pic.twitter.com/GPa7qTdhdK
— Mary Kay Cabot (@MaryKayCabot) August 15, 2023
Bitonio said, “I mean it’s just in our practice, you protect the quarterback,”
“You don’t want to come close to the quarterback, you don’t want to take cheap shots, things like that where there might’ve been a couple of questionable plays both ways today.”
Bitonio was particularly displeased that the Eagles handled Deshaun Watson too carelessly.
The practice took place in sweltering heat and was hyped up half an hour into the practice session, during which Blankenship intercepted a tipped pass, the first of his two picks off Watson for the day and third in the two sessions.
Sydney Brown, the rookie safety ran over Demetric Felton on the return. Felton and a few Browns objected to the hit, which led to a scuffle.
Dawand Jones in order to defend his teammates engaged in some pushing and shoving. When players from both teams joined the scrum, it was quickly broken up.
Bitonio said, “We’re going into this week trying to get better in practice and work and sometimes there are some cheap shots and things like that where you want to defend yourself,”
“I don’t know the exact situation, but there were a couple shots today where we’re trying to make sure we’re getting the best out of practice and not fighting. But it was just a little heated second day. It always gets a little bit more fired up.”
K’Von Wallace, safety from the Eagles side said, “We just had to play with a little bit of a chip on our shoulder compared to yesterday,”
“Play with a little more edge. it showed and ended up dominating on both sides of the ball.”
Regarding the fight, he said, “it’s just alpha males just going at it. When you’ve got competitors and competition going on and guys on the ground that supposedly weren’t supposed to be on the ground, some teammates might get a little heated and pushing and shoving going on, but that’s all it was. Just football at the end of the day.”
Kevin Stefanski intervened which Bitonio appreciated and said, “We don’t want to fight out here,”
“We want to get better and when two teams are competing, things are going to get fired up. So it happens. But coach tried to calm us down and when he has the offense and their defense, we try and control those situations.
