Kitchens Punishes Browns with 'Gassers' After Chad Thomas-Pharaoh Brown Fight

Tensions boiled over at Cleveland Browns training camp Sunday, with defensive end Chad Thomas and tight end Pharaoh Brown getting into a brief skirmish that had coach Freddie Kitchens taking the team back to high school.

Kitchens went with an old-school punishment following the fight, sending his team to the sideline for a series of sideline-to-sideline sprints—better known in the football world as "gassers."

If you watch the video, you may notice a beating sun in the background. The high temperature at Browns training camp yesterday was 89 degrees.

Suffice it to say, neither Thomas nor Brown were their teammates' favorite people after practice.

Thomas, a second-year player coming off a wildly disappointing rookie campaign, also took his frustrations out on a fan. Nate Ulrich of the Akron Beacon Journal reported Thomas flipped off a heckling fan during the sprints, a move that will not ingratiate him to a fanbase that is less-than-patiently waiting for him to make an impact.

In the macro, this is no big deal. Guys fight in training camp all the time. Football is a competitive, physical sport, and a lot of these guys are battling for their spots on the depth chart. Thomas and Brown are both young backups looking to make an impression on the coaching staff; they're the exact types of players who tend to be involved in these skirmishes.

In the micro, making the team run gassers is evidence of Kitchens' no-nonsense style. These types of punishments are typically left to the lower levels of football in the modern era, something you're more likely to see in an old-school movie than an NFL training camp in 2019. 

It's also evidence that Kitchens isn't allowing the Browns to take their high preseason expectations lightly.