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Chuck Pagano Discusses Sunday’s Scuffle and Oklahoma Drill

By Luke Schultheis

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Indianapolis Colts head coach Chuck Pagano met with the media after Sunday’s practice to discuss the scuffle between Jonotthan Harrison and Kelcy Quarles that led to their ejections, as well as his use of the Oklahoma drill starting the other day in training camp practice.

Regarding, the fight that broke out between Harrison and Quarles:

"“Tempers start to flare a little bit, and the fuses are really short,” said Pagano regarding the in-practice scuffle. “We want to be competitive, but not combative. You probably saw a couple of guys get after it a little bit, go over the line, and if that happens in a game, you’re gone right. They throw you out.”“You saw those two guys walk off the field,” added Pagano. “That’s what happens. They’re not available to play anymore, so hopefully we get the message and we compete and compete at a high level, but we don’t go over the top.”"

However, as Pagano noted, the Colts are looking to get more competitive, not necessarily combative. With the team looking to get “tougher” on both sides of the football this season, the team has started deploying the Oklahoma drill in practices.

For those unfamiliar with the old-time football drill, the coaches will typically line up two players a few yards apart from one another and have the two players run at each other to try to knock the other one down:

The drill was perhaps popularized by Chuck Knoll‘s Pittsburgh Steelers, who used it in practices during the 1970’s en route to forming their “Steel Curtain” identit

Toughness that Pagano is looking to build with his own team:

"“Yeah, first time,” responded when Pagano when asked of recently running the drill. “So, it was good, and again, we’re looking for ways to raise the bar from a competitive standpoint. Technique and fundamentals, you know it’s the first drill you learn.”“You know first day of practice, everyday growing up was the Oklahoma drill and sometimes, it has seemed to gone away for whatever reasons, but we dusted it off and broke it out and we had a good time,” concluded Pagano."

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