New Fairfield grad Bisaccia has coached Raiders with grit, grace
The day after the Las Vegas Raiders closed the regular season and clinched a playoff spot with Sunday’s overtime victory over the Chargers, a reporter took the circuitous route toward finding out how interim coach Rich Bisaccia feels about the prospects of landing the full-time job.
The Raiders lost five of six games in November December but responded by winning four in a row. Bisaccia has nearly 40 years of coaching experience. He calmly guided the team through unprecedented chaos this season.
All of this was pointed out as Bisaccia was essentially/eventually asked if he would, no matter how everything turns out, look back feeling that his interim tag deserved to be removed.
Bisaccia let out a full breath of long laughter.
“That’s a long-winded question,” he said. “I don’t think six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years from now I’m going to be watching much football. But I certainly appreciate the question.”
Good NFL coaches don’t beg their way into a job. They perform their way into a job.
Bisaccia, 61, a Yonkers, N.Y, native whose time at New Fairfield High in the late 1970s was part of a springboard to a career as an NCAA and NFL assistant, has likely at least performed his way into important conversations about the future of the Raiders.
The Raiders (10-7), looking for their first playoff victory in 19 years, play an AFC Wild Card game Saturday in Cincinnati against the Bengals (10-7). Soon — maybe days, maybe weeks — Bisaccia will learn his professional fate.
Maybe owner Mark Davis will make a splash with a big-name hire. Brian Flores, whose firing by the
Dolphins was a headscratcher, is available. Jim Harbaugh’s name has been floated. There will be no shortage of capable applicants. Bisaccia isn’t the only person who can do the job. But he’s one of them. And he’s done it.
The Raiders have six walk-off victories, doing the sort of thing week in and week out that they did in Week 18 — falling behind and coming back. Bisaccia went 7-5 as head coach. Players, some who have adopted ‘No one cares,’ as the team motto, have publicly expressed admiration for him.
“Coach Bisaccia’s son wrote this thing for himself and was kind enough to give me a copy,” quarterback Derek Carr said in a press conference before the regular season finale. “It’s been in my office ever since we were back in Oakland. One part of it literally says, ‘No one cares.’ I’ve held on to that because no matter what you go through, no matter how many situations you’ve had, how many head coaches, coordinators and players have come through the building, no matter where you’re at, nobody cares. You’ve just got to win football games. … No one cares what happened. It’s something I teach my kids.”
Bisaccia was promoted from special teams coordinator to interim head coach in October when his longtime mentor and friend, Jon Gruden, resigned. He took over a team reeling from revelations that Gruden had sent racist, homophobic and sexist emails. Weeks later, wide receiver Henry Ruggs was arrested and charged with felony DUI charges resulting in death.
All the while, Bisaccia set a tone of calm and determination, and a healthy personal and professional balance, for a franchise surrounded, literally and figuratively, by the noise of casino slots. Bisaccia, learning on the fly, reportedly had trouble figuring out the headset during his debut against the Broncos Oct. 17 and never seemed to suggest the job was any more complicated than what’s most important: how to go about life and its pursuits.
“I’ve said it multiple times,” Bisaccia said during Monday’s press conference.
“We’ve tried to develop a group of men that care about each other, know what to do and compete with relentless effort. That’s a hard team to beat. And once they learn to respect each other’s work, it’s an enjoyable place to come to work. And to respond to whatever adversity or whatever or prosperity that might show up that day, it gives you an opportunity to forge your identity.”
The Raiders reached this point with victories over the Browns, Broncos, Colts and finally the Chargers in a game that went to overtime with each team needing only a tie to make the playoffs. But Vegas kicker Daniel Carlson converted a 47-yard field goal for a 35-32 victory, perhaps the NFL game of the year, that prolonged this feel-good run for a football lifer used to operating behind the scenes.
One area friend, Danbury High athletic director Chip Salvestrini, recently called Bisaccia the “purest of the pure football coach,” and that’s the persona he has exuded for a team and situation needing exactly that.
Bisaccia attended Yankton College in South Dakota before transferring to Wayne State College in Nebraska and graduating in 1983. He remained at Wayne as an assistant through 1987 before moving to South Carolina, where he coached various positions through 1993.
He was running backs and special teams coach at Clemson in 1994-98 and held the same positions at Ole Miss in 1999-01. In 2002, he was hired by Gruden, then coach of the Bucs, as special teams coordinator. They won Super Bowl XXXVII — a 48-21 victory over the Raiders. Bisaccia later coordinated special teams for the Chargers and Cowboys before being hired by the Raiders with Gruden’s 2018 return to coaching. The football world is still getting to know him.
“I think a lot of other people do a much better job of explaining me than I do,” Bisaccia said. “I was asked about my style and I don’t really know. I think other people are better at explaining me.”
Asked if he’s changed as a head coach, he said, “If we don’t grow, if we don’t have a sense of humility and listen and learn and grow and improve, then you stay the same. I don’t think I’ve changed. I think I’ve learned.”
The Raiders won their first two games under Bisaccia to improve to 5-2. Ruggs was involved in his crash and arrested Nov. 2 during the bye week. Bisaccia met the media Nov. 3, expressing condolences to the family of the woman killed and empathy to Ruggs, 22, who could face decades in prison.
“We’re deeply saddened for everyone affected, especially the victim’s family,” Bisaccia said. “That being said, we love Henry Ruggs and want him to know that. His terrible lapse in judgment of the most horrific kind, it’s something he will have to live with the rest of his life. The gravity of the situation is not lost on anyone here and we understand and respect the loss of life.”
The Raiders lost their next three games and later fell to 6-7 with a 48-9 loss to the Chiefs. That was Dec. 12.
By Jan. 12, Bisaccia was well into game-planning for the playoffs. He wondered aloud this week whether he had been caught on video dancing in celebration.
“I hope that since he’s taken over we’ve taken in some of his beliefs in the way he coaches and the way he teachers and the way he pushes us,” Carr said. “The family aspect. The grittiness. I think I told somebody one time, ‘If you’re a bad teammate or you don’t try hard, you’re probably not going to like him.’ It’s a good thing we have a lot of guys who are good teammates and do try hard, because you end up liking your head coach when he is the way that he is. We love him. We’ve tried to embrace everything he’s teaching and saying and make it about us and nobody else.”