With over two full weeks of training camp in the books and less than one week left, it isn’t unusual for a fight to break out in the middle of practice. What is unusual is to see two star players going after each other. This happened at practice on Monday.

During the team portion of practice — where the offense goes against the defense — Denver Broncos wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders was targeted for a pass while being tightly covered by Chris Harris Jr. There was contact in the air and both players went to the ground, then immediately started going after each other.

The players were eventually separated and practice continued. Head coach Gary Kubiak shrugged off any long-term implications of this scuffle after practice.

“They were just competing,” Kubiak said. “They are just tired at going at each other, but we got to keep our composure.”

Kubiak said it is important to practice how you want to play, even in regards to handling situations like this.

“Guys are going to get upset and battle each other, but there are some things that they don’t let you do on the field so we can’t do those at practice either,” Kubiak said.

Although neither Harris nor Sanders returned to the field for the rest of practice, Kubiak insisted it was not a punishment.

Later in practice, as both remained on the sideline, Sanders went over to Harris and the two shook hands and exchanged a few words — seemingly clearing the air between them. However, both declined to talk to the media after practice.

“We had a very competitive practice today,” Kubiak said. “We’re going to have two against the (49ers), and we are going to play them on Saturday.”

The San Francisco 49ers will be in town to practice against the Broncos on Wednesday and Thursday. These live practices will be a great opportunity for Kubiak to get an extended look at the makeup of this team.

“I’ve got so many questions to get answered on this team,” Kubiak said. “This week is a big week for this team.”

Especially after the scuffle between Harris and Sanders, Kubiak wants to make sure that the practices with San Francisco remain competitive but don’t bubble over into anything else. To do that, Kubiak and San Francisco head coach Chip Kelly have talked about how to formulate the practices and will continue to do so over the next few days.

“(Chip Kelly and I) have talked a couple times. We’ll probably talk Thursday morning again,” Kubiak said. “Obviously we want to have good competition. We are going to be in pads against each other twice. We want to stay healthy and compete.”

Tuesday’s practice will be the last training camp practice where the Broncos are going up against each other, and from what happened on Monday with Harris and Sanders, the players are ready to play someone other than themselves.

As Kubiak said last week in preparation for the Broncos first preseason game, “We’ve been going at each other for a long time. Now it’s time to go with each other.”