Baltimore Ravens cornerback Nate Wiggins was removed from the joint practice with the Indianapolis Colts on Tuesday after a fight broke out between the two teams.
The fight started with what appeared to be a couple of harmless shoves between Colts running back Tyler Goodson and Ravens undrafted rookie cornerback Keyon Martin after Baltimore wide receiver LaJohntay Wester fair caught a ball in a punt drill. Ravens first-round safety Malaki Starks and Martin were blocking Goodson on the play.
After Goodson returned a late shove by Martin, several Ravens players not involved in the drill ran in from the sideline. Wiggins, the second-year corner, led the charge. He and Goodson squared off, with several punches being thrown. Players from both teams jumped into the mix, creating a pile that took a while to separate.
After being sent to the sideline, Wiggins ultimately walked inside the team facility and watched a chunk of what remained of practice from a window overlooking the field.
“That’s joint practice, you know. No matter what, you can’t get out of a joint practice without a fight,” Colts safety Cam Bynum told members of the media after the joint session. “You gotta stand up for your teammates. Obviously, it’s going to get chippy during the special teams phase. That’s a staple in joint practices. Every time there’s a special teams (session), it gets chippy. That’s just the dog mindset. It’s just one of those things. It’s all love.”
Tempers flared on a few other occasions. During one special teams play, Ravens coach John Harbaugh pulled one of his players away from a Colts player. However, there was no further incident where the two teams came together.
Asked about the fight, Ravens defensive end Nnamdi Madubuike said he was on another field and didn’t get a good look at it, but he heard, “Nate was slugging somebody.”
“I thought guys handled it good,” Colts coach Shane Steichen added. “You never want to see a fight. We always talk about that in the meetings. We’re not fighting. Obviously, one skirmish broke out there, but I thought the guys handled it well. Everyone broke it up, and we went back to practice.”
Harbaugh said it should be a learning experience for Wiggins and the team as a whole.
“We want to play it like it was a game,” Harbaugh said following practice. “So here is an opportunity to handle situations like you’re going to handle them in a game. We did 99 percent of the time, but we didn’t on that play. …
“It always happens in these practices on special teams, and usually it’s the gunners. The gunner/vice drill, you can pretty much chalk it up and predict it’s going to happen, because it’s one of those full-field, really competitive drills. … It should be a learning experience opportunity for our team, too. You don’t have to throw a punch and get thrown out of the game. The officials threw both of those guys out. That’s an opportunity for us to learn from.”
Wiggins was a first-round pick of the Ravens in 2024. He played in all but two games during a strong rookie campaign, where he broke up 13 passes and held quarterbacks to a 66.7 passer rating when they targeted him. He enters the 2025 season as a likely starting outside corner and one of Baltimore’s core defenders.
The Ravens host the Colts for a preseason game at M&T Bank Stadium on Thursday at 7 p.m. ET.
(Photo: Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
