The Panthers didn’t plan to have second-year wide receiver Xavier Legette play their entire preseason game with the Browns on Friday night, but they were looking to pull him on their terms rather than having the officials do it for them.
Legette was ejected during the team’s second offensive series for fighting with Browns cornerback Rayshawn Mitchell. Legette was blocking Mitchell and the two players exchanged blows before things deescalated and they got sent to the locker room.
After the game, Panthers head coach Dave Canales said he wanted to see more discipline from the wideout.
“I was right in front of it,” Canales said, via the team’s website. “We ask our receivers to finish the play with hands on. He had his hands on the guy the whole time through the echo of the whistle. The guy swung and chopped his arms down, and Xavier just kind of held on to his jersey. Then they started exchanging punches. You can’t do that, neither side, both guys got ejected, rightly so. We can’t have that as a part of our game. It’s a physical game; can’t handle that, tempers are going to get hot, but as soon as you throw a punch, all of a sudden we’re at a disadvantage. So we want to see better from X for sure.”
The fallout from the scrap would have been more painful in the regular season, which makes the ejection a good teaching point for Canales as the Panthers head into September.
