The Falcons, if you didn’t know, had a rough day last Sunday in Carolina. Falcons defensive tackle Ra’Shede Hageman had a particularly rough day, punctuated by a sideline scuffle with defensive line coach Bryan Cox.
Hageman recently said it’s not an issue, although it’s still not clear what transpired.
“Just a little scuffle,” Hageman said, via D. Orlando Ledbetter of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Tempers were flaring. That’s pretty much what happened.”
Something caused Hageman to become incensed early in Atlanta’s 38-0 loss to Carolina. Hageman’s explanation makes it hard to understand how he got mad, and who he was mad at.
“I felt like some of the players on the sideline weren’t a part of the scuffle so therefore they assumed what was going on,” Hageman said. “When you mix that with just emotion, people get misled. At the end of the day, it was just a miscommunication. We talked about it and we’ll just move on.”
Hageman attributed the situation to emotion.
“Who likes to lose?” Hageman said. “At the end of the day, it’s an emotional game. When everything is said and done, you just have to regroup and keep things moving.”
Things apparently will keep moving between Cox and Hageman, despite whatever it was that happened and however it came to be. But Hageman disputes the characterization (by coach Dan Quinn) of Hageman’s relationship with Cox as a father-son situation.
“He’s got his own children,” Hageman said of Cox. “I’ve got my own children. It’s coach-and-player relationship. That’s how it’s got to be. He’s the coach and I’m the player. Father-and-son, I have my own kids. I have my own family.”
Plenty of Falcons employees could soon be able to spend more time with those families, based on the team’s collapse in 2015.
