Von Miller signed a one-year deal with Dallas on Tuesday that can climb to $7.5 million, closing out a childhood-dream story for a pass rusher who grew up wanting exactly this uniform. The Cowboys needed the edge help. What they got, two days earlier at the same practice facility, was a joint session against the Saints that stopped being a rehearsal and turned into a fight serious enough that Louis Riddick, watching from the ESPN set, said flatly that too many players were "cutting people" like the whistle meant nothing. Jerry Jones built a roster this summer that now has both a marquee free-agent signing and a credibility problem, on the same practice field, in the same week.

Joint practices exist because two teams sharing a facility for three days is cheaper than two teams renting stadiums for preseason games nobody wants to play in full, and the model only works if the players agree to stop before it's a season-altering injury. Miller arrives into a locker room that just showed it hasn't fully agreed to that. Dallas opens the regular season September 4 against Philadelphia, and the answer to whether this week was noise or a preview travels with the team into that game.