James Pearce, other Falcons went "a little too far" in practice scuffles Sunday
Pearce scuffled with left guard Matthew Bergeron and right tackle Kaleb McGary on back-to-back plays during a drill pitting the first-team offense against the second-team defense. Pearce's fellow edge rusher Leonard Floyd got involved both times as well and defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich said after the session that the rookie's "anger got the best of him a little bit.
"We're trying to develop a culture, a style of play for sure, and part of that is the violence with which we play and aggression, the urgency and all that," defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich said, via Marc Raimondi of ESPN.com. "Today, at times, it went a little too far and we've got to learn how to manage that. You're going to get agitated and, especially when you're playing really good defense, the offense is going to get very agitated, so you've got to anticipate punches being thrown, things being said, people getting pushed. In those moments, you got to thrive and not retaliate and so it's a good lesson to be learned today."
The Falcons are over a week away from their first preseason game, so Pearce and the rest of the club are going to have to try to find ways to make cooler heads prevail for a little while longer before they'll have a chance to let out their aggression on players in other jerseys.
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