  We report the detection of extended warm ionized gas in two powerful
high-redshift radio galaxies, NVSS J210626-314003 at z=2.10 and TXS 2353-003 at
z=1.49, that does not appear to be associated with the radio jets. This is
contrary to what would be expected from the alignment effect, a characteristic
feature of distant, powerful radio galaxies at z> 0.6. The gas also has smaller
velocity gradients and line widths than most other high-z radio galaxies with
similar data. Both galaxies are part of a systematic study of 50 high-redshift
radio galaxies with SINFONI, and are the only two that are characterized by the
presence of high surface-brightness gas not associated with the jet axis and by
the absence of such gas aligned with the jet. Both galaxies are spatially
resolved with ISAAC broadband imaging covering the rest-frame R band, and have
extended wings that cannot be attributed to line contamination. We argue that
the gas and stellar properties of these galaxies are more akin to gas-rich
brightest cluster galaxies in cool-core clusters than the general population of
high-redshift radio galaxies at z>2. In support of this interpretation, one of
our sources, TXS 2353-003, for which we have H\alpha\ narrowband imaging, is
associated with an overdensity of candidate H\alpha\ emitters by a factor of 8
relative to the field at z=1.5. We discuss possible scenarios of the
evolutionary state of these galaxies and the nature of their emission line gas
within the context of cyclical AGN feedback.
