Baker on Cardinals Joint Practice: 'Had a Lot of Juice'

No fights and no injuries — that's what the Arizona Cardinals and Tennessee Titans hoped to achieve in Nashville during joint practices on Aug. 24 and that's what both franchises got.

Yet, this was the first joint practice for most of the Cardinals, including safety Budda Baker. The Pro-Bowl safety said that he and the rest of the defense didn't take the practice lightly.

“Had a lot of juice, had a lot of fun,” Baker told reporters after Wednesday's practice. “Guys were ready early. This is my first joint practice in my career so I was hyped up myself. It was a good time. (The) defense had a good time today.

"My favorite part was everything. One-on-ones, 7s, two-minute. We'll get in all those situations in a game."

Arizona had familiarity with Tennessee as the Cardinals beat the Titans 38-13 in the 2021 regular-season opener. It's safe to say Arizona's defense had some fun with the other team's offense.

"We still talk trash to our teammates (normally), but this is a new face," Baker said. "You can say the same jokes and it's the first time they're hearing it . . . We didn't want to get too personal. We just want to give a little smack talk here and there."

The Cardinals' defense talked the talk and walked the walk. They intercepted the Titans quarterbacks twice — including a Byron Murphy Jr. end-zone catch from a Ryan Tannehill throw.

Overall, the Cardinals' defense did their job against a team that's won the division in back-to-back years. Baker was pleased with the results from the defense.

“If we can do great against them, I feel like we can do great against anybody and today kind of showed,” Baker told reporters. “We competed, got some picks today, got our hands on the football and it was a great day.”

Jalen Thompson and Baker are arguably one of the best safety duos in the NFL. Yet, there's uncertainty with the cornerbacks. After Murphy, Marco Wilson, Antonio Hamilton, Josh Jackson, rookie Christian Matthew and Jace Whittaker make up the rest of the corner unit. Hamilton has been out of practice this week because of an unknown issue.

Baker made sure that the safety duo talked with the cornerbacks throughout the practice.

He said, "For me and JT, just to get the communication out as early as possible; especially with guys that are relatively new. You've got Marco in his second year. As long as we can communicate to them the call beforehand and they can just lock in . . . So just for us is to get that communication out as early as possible and to let the corners play."

On the offensive side of the ball, wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins had a highlight-reel one-handed catch that has eclipsed over 700,000 views on Twitter.

… pic.twitter.com/cAOccNCEyH
— Deandre Hopkins (@DeAndreHopkins) August 24, 2022

Baker was asked if he saw the catch, but said, “I didn't see it, but I heard about it. So hopefully, we'll be seeing that on social media or something like that because I definitely want to see that.”

Due to injuries, Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury and Titans head coach Mike Vrabel both agreed to have only one day of joint practices instead of two.

Arizona will practice on its own with a walkthrough at Vanderbilt University on Thursday, before taking on the Titans in the team's final preseason game Saturday.