Cardinals expected to join Titans for joint practices in Tennessee, Vrabel says

The Arizona Cardinals are expected to spend a portion of their preseason on the road in Nashville practicing against the Titans, Tennessee head coach Mike Vrabel said Monday during the NFL meetings in Palm Beach, Fla.

The preseason schedules for NFL teams have yet to be released, but Vrabel said the Titans “anticipate” that they will practice against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as well as the Cardinals, the latter of whom will visit in the third week of the preseason.

“Not only is it an evaluation, but it’s preparation. These are good football teams,” Vrabel told reporters. “I mean, we saw what Arizona did to us in the first week of the season. It’s a talented team, a fast team. We know how good Tampa Bay is. These are opportunities for us to prepare and also evaluate our team.

Vrabel added that Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians and the Cardinals’ Kliff Kingsbury “do a good job of scheduling these practices and doing it in the safest, most competitive way possible.”

Arizona visited Tennessee in Week 1 of last season and won 38-13.

Kingsbury and Vrabel have familiarity with one another from their playing days with the New England Patriots. Kingsbury was a backup quarterback under head coach Bill Belichick in 2003, which crossed over Vrabel’s 2001-08 stint with New England that saw him win three titles as a player.

Kingsbury has explored joint practices in the past, but other teams have not expressed interest in dealing with the Arizona heat, which would be required to fit two teams on a field at either the team’s practice facility or State Farm Stadium.

Scheduling didn’t allow Arizona to hit the road for a joint practice last season, and the Cardinals have not done so since 2016, when they joined the then-San Diego Chargers for practices in California.

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