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Pressure is trying to rebound from a 5-11 season, which is exactly what the Ravens are attempting to do. Throw in the uncertainty of playing for a new coach, an undetermined depth chart and the fatigue that comes from practicing twice a day, and just about anything can happen.
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"You go 5-11, guess what? You'd better be intense," defensive end Trevor Pryce said. "It doesn't matter who the coach is. You have to develop a sense of urgency at 5-11. You have to earn the right to have a calm and relaxing offseason, and you can't do that at 5-11."
Pryce, however, can't condone the fighting. Not while teams like the New England Patriots and New York Giants are using their minicamps to build on successful seasons.
"Go ahead, wrestle each other, pull each other's facemasks, yeah, great, wonderful, have fun. Now we gotta go play the Patriots. They won 18 straight football games. The Giants won the Super Bowl. Do we really have to prove we're all men?" Pryce said.
"If we can get all this out of the way now, scrapping and being undisciplined and 80 men jumping in a pile together, fine. So now we've proved I'm tough, you're tough, hooray, we're all tough. Are we a good football team? What's more important, proving you're tough or proving we're a good football team? That's how I look at it."
Pryce said he was laughing at his teammates as they piled together in the middle of the field. It wasn't funny to Cousins and Gordon, but afterward they seemed at peace with each other.
"At the end of the day, we're teammates," Cousins said.
"We settled it like men," Gordon insisted. "No hard feelings."
Harbaugh liked the show of emotion, but doesn't expect to see a similar show anytime soon.
"We had a good practice. Our guys are competitive, they like football, it's going to happen," he said. "I think as they realize the tempo of the practice is going to stay the same, it will probably happen less and less. They're a feisty bunch."
