Oxnard, Calif. – First, let's acknowledge that the New Orleans Saints completed the necessary work in Tuesday's joint practice with the Dallas Cowboys at the River Ridge Playing Fields.

That's the body of the story.

The headline? Feistiness themed a two-hour workout that was colored by sideline hits, tackles to the ground, clenched face masks and jerseys, verbal insults exchanged and, at times, hands thrown.

The Saints gave at least as well, and often better, than they received on a day that sometimes had a regular season feel because of the surrounding emotion.

"I think this is a good of example of there's a lot of rah-rah and emotion to football and that's a part of it," Saints Coach Kellen Moore said. "At the end of the day, it's about executing and running football plays. There's a lot of loud people on a football field but at the end of the day, it's about executing football plays and moving it downfield or stopping it on defense, and just playing clean football. Take all the emotion out of it, we'll watch it without all the rah-rah to it and we'll get some good lessons."

Linebacker Pete Werner said there were positives and negatives to the cantankerousness.

"When they get out of hand, that's what you don't want," Werner said. "You don't want any punches thrown or anything like that; we've got to get practice moving. But you want your guys protecting each other, and you can also say that for the other team. There's a part of it that's good and the other part where, all right, come on, let's be smart here and let's get this moving."

The first-team defense applied the "get moving" part during a red zone drill, first allowing three consecutive Dak Prescott completions (two for touchdowns) before settling in after the ball was moved inside the 10, and producing two incompletions, and run stop and a pass completion that was stopped short of the goal line.

"I thought we got here (Monday) night from New Orleans and I think we came out with a lot of energy, a lot of juice," Werner said. "And I think we put some good tape out there. We're obviously going to learn and correct the mistakes, but I'm happy the way that we showed up and competed."

Offensively, the day belonged to quarterback Tyler Shough and receiver Chris Olave. The chemistry between the second-year quarterback and All-Pro receiver continues to blossom. Unofficially, they connected on eight of nine targets, including a spectacular end zone hookup.

"I thought Tyler did some good things, he's going to learn from a few throws," Moore said. "But I thought his operations, command, I thought he did a good job of handling that the whole day."

The competitiveness of the event earned Shough's approval.

"I thought it was a lot of fun," he said. "It was a good opportunity for us to go against another really good team and kind of reset every single period with some chippiness and I thought we operated pretty well.

"We were competing. We were competing the whole time, we were getting after it. You felt the juice. I was going out there talking crap to the guys, talking a bunch, we were out there competing every single down and that's what we want. But we also have to manage the ebbs and flows of the game, too, and it felt that way. We were able to get some really good work in."

"For our guys, there's some edginess to football and we get to learn how this one navigated," Moore added. "I think for our guys, we got some good stuff out of it."

DNF: Running back Alvin Kamara (knee) and cornerback Quincy Riley (groin) did not finish practice. Running back Kendre Miller (back) and defensive tackle John Ridgeway (back) returned.

NO TIMETABLE: Moore said the Saints will be careful in navigating the hamstring injury of rookie receiver Jordyn Tyson. Tyson injured his hamstring in college, aggravated the injury prior to the draft and tweaked it on the first day of rookie minicamp. The team managed his rehab and workload until training camp and after a couple of standout weeks, Tyson injured his hamstring on Aug. 13 during the joint practice with Jacksonville.

"Any time a guy has to navigate an injury there's a timetable, but we're not going to get stuck on what the timetable is," Moore said. "We'll just let him just keep getting healthy, we'll work through it. (Edge rusher) Chase (Young) was an example last year, where someone has an injury."

Young missed the first five games with a calf injury last season, and returned to register a career high 10 sacks in the final 12 games.

"I know sometimes there's a patience or impatience to what a timeline is," Moore said. "Let's just let him get healthy and we'll figure it out."