Maxx Crosby was one of Jon Gruden’s favorite players, but the Raiders’ All-Pro pass rusher said there was one thing he would do that infuriated his former head coach.
Crosby told the story on the Pardon My Take podcast this week…
“[Jon Gruden] literally threatened to cut met in the middle of the field my first training camp. His thing, he’s an offensive coach, and I’ve always had offensive coaches until [Pierce] got here. He would get so mad about batting balls. We’d be in practice doing team and he refused to let us bat the ball. But I would tell him ‘Why the f— are we practicing to not bat balls, but in the game we’re going to be doing the same sh–, so what’s the point?’
But he’s an offensive guy so he wants practice to move a certain way. So I’m not even thinking. I’m just trying to make plays… I’m a third string. I’m just trying to do everything. It was like the second week of training camp I swatted a ball down and I’m f—ing hype celebrating, and he’s looking at me all irritated. It happens again. Boom. Swatted a ball down. Then it happens at the end of practice. I swat it for the third time.
He’s like ‘Stop swatting the f—ing ball down! I’ll f—ing cut your *** I swear to God if you do it one more time!’
I [wasn’t] used to that in college. He could do whatever… we’d hit the scout team quarterback… and you bat one Derek Carr ball, you’re getting motherf—-. He loved that about me because I would go 100 miles an hour, but that the same time, he [cussed] me all the time about batting balls. It’s an offensive coach thing. [Josh] McDaniels was the same way. He f—ing hated it.”
The interesting detail to Crosby’s story is that McDaniels apparently didn’t like passes being batted down in practice, either.
Just a guess… Antonio Pierce probably won’t continue to tradition of berating the defense for batting down passes in practice.
twitter: @raidersbeat
