Punching People: It’s the Raider Way, Baby!

Apparently coaching, the Raiders and punching people together enjoy a harmony unlike many things in this world. By now, everyone knows about Tom Cables alleged bouts with assistant coaches and wives.↵↵But the phenomenon extends to their former players as well. Jeremy Brigham was a tight end with the team from 1998 to 2001 and now coaches 10- and 11-year-olds in the game that he briefly made his living playing.↵

↵↵And he’s definitely no slouch. He won’t tolerate his assistants missing film study. Yes, film study for youth football players. He fired Scott Haggerty, the dad of one of his players who coached with him for that infraction.↵

↵↵And heaven forbid he finds out you tipped plays to the other team. A day after a 38-0 victory Saturday, the opposing coach told Brigham that his former assistant had given his team all of the coach’s plays. Which, even if true, got him a whole lot of nothing.↵

↵↵Haggerty claims the other coach was joking and that he didn’t know the team’s plays. Brigham didn’t really want to listen. Instead, according to Haggerty, he found a four-foot fence to bend Haggerty over and then punched his former assistant in the back of the head. Some might call that an extreme response to having the playbook you created for your youth football team tipped to another coach, who happened to get shutout anyway.↵

↵↵So Brigham might want to ease up on his martinet-like coaching tactics. Or maybe just stop hitting people. I don’t know. They do things different in the Raider School of Coaching. ↵

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