Antonio Pierce makes his NFL head coaching debut Sunday in Las Vegas, four days after being named the interim replacement for fired Raiders coach Josh McDaniels. It comes against the New York Giants, the franchise with which Pierce won a Super Bowl during his playing career.
“How about that? Couldn’t write it up,” Pierce said last week. “But it’s not Antonio Pierce versus the New York Giants. [It’s the] Las Vegas Raiders versus the Giants, coming to our house. [It’s a] much-needed win for us. We’ve had two ugly losses. It’s time to change that. ... It’s about the Las Vegas Raiders. Those players understand that. This is about them. It ain’t about me.”
Even so, Pierce will be in the spotlight. It is the second straight season in which a relatively prominent former player has been named a team’s interim coach. Last season, the Indianapolis Colts went with Jeff Saturday, their former center who had become an analyst for ESPN. But that move drew criticism because of Saturday’s lack of previous coaching experience above the high school level. That is not the case with Pierce, who had experience as an assistant coach in college at Arizona State and was in his second season as the Raiders’ linebackers coach.
“I’m not a long-winded person,” Pierce said Wednesday at his introductory news conference. “I don’t give you a dialogue or write an essay. I get right to the point. … You know how I feel when I walk out the door. … I’m a former player. … I can relate to them. I’ve done the same things they’ve done. I’ve walked the same paths they’ve walked. I’ve felt the same pain they’ve felt. … My personality will come out and reflect on this team. And hopefully we see that on Sunday.”
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Pierce spent nine seasons in the NFL as a linebacker with Washington and the Giants. He made Washington’s roster as an undrafted rookie in 2001 playing for Marty Schottenheimer, then spent his final five seasons with the Giants, earning a Pro Bowl selection and cementing his reputation as a locker room leader.
“The best teams that I’ve ever been on as a player or as a coach [are] player-ran,” Pierce said. “… That’s [what] our mentality is going to be right now: us against the world. Raider Nation against everybody else.”
The Raiders are on a two-game losing streak that has dropped them to 3-5. They’re coming off a 26-14 defeat Monday night at Detroit in which wide receiver Davante Adams showed his frustration by slamming his helmet to the ground on the sideline during a one-catch performance.
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Raiders owner Mark Davis, who reportedly had conducted recent meetings with selected players, fired McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler late Tuesday night. The team promoted Pierce to interim coach and assistant GM Champ Kelly to interim general manager Wednesday. The Raiders also fired offensive coordinator Mick Lombardi and promoted quarterbacks coach Bo Hardegree to offensive coordinator, and they benched veteran Jimmy Garoppolo to go with rookie Aidan O’Connell as the starting quarterback.
That’s quite the thorough midseason housecleaning, and all of it came on a short workweek.
“It’s a new day,” Pierce said. “It’s a new chapter. It’s a new era. It’s a new mind-set. What is that mind-set? It’s that of the Raider pride, the commitment to excellence and making sure our alumni, our fan base and Raider Nation are proud of what they see on the field. What does that look like? Tough, passionate, effort, energy and enthusiasm that you see when we all watched our kids and these young men who are now pro athletes play when they were in Pop Warner, having that love for the game.”
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Pierce spoke bluntly at his opening news conference, saying at one point that he expected “more” from his team’s defense.
“We’ve had great moments,” Pierce said. “And we’ve had other moments like, ‘What the hell?’ ”
It is the second time in the past three seasons that the Raiders have had an interim coach. Rich Bisaccia took the team to the playoffs in the 2021 season after Jon Gruden resigned that October amid reports revealing that he had used racist, homophobic and misogynistic language in emails before returning to the NFL in 2018 from the broadcast booth. The emails were sent to Bruce Allen, the former president of Washington’s NFL team, and others while Gruden worked for ESPN and were gathered as part of the NFL’s investigation led by attorney Beth Wilkinson into Washington’s workplace.
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Davis did not retain Bisaccia, turning to the new football brain trust of McDaniels and Ziegler in January 2022. Less than two full seasons later, the Raiders have hit the reset button again.
“I’m not promising we’re going to go undefeated,” Pierce said. “I’m not promising we’re going to redo the record books. But I am promising you this: We’re going to have fun doing it. And I know when you start having fun and your guys start believing in one another and they start really engaging in each other and believing in what the coaches are telling them and understanding it’s in their best interests and we are in this together, when you put the ‘we’ aspect and ‘us’ and team into it, it changes all that from the ‘I’s.”
Bills return to Cincinnati
The Buffalo Bills will be in Cincinnati to face the Bengals on Sunday night in a key game between AFC contenders. It will mark the return to Paycor Stadium for Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who suffered cardiac arrest on the field during the Bills’ game Jan. 2 at Cincinnati and was resuscitated by emergency medical responders.
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Hamlin has resumed his NFL career, but it’s not clear whether he will play in this game. He faces a numbers crunch at safety and has been on the Bills’ game-day inactive list for all but one game, playing on special teams Oct. 1 against the Miami Dolphins in Orchard Park, N.Y.
“It’s hard to tell exactly how guys are going to feel, exactly how I’m going to feel,” quarterback Josh Allen said. “I’m trying to take it as it’s a normal game. We don’t make [it] any bigger or less than the previous or the next one. But I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of emotions flowing through some guys there and being back on that field, especially Damar. But at the same time, we’ve got a job to do, and we’ve got to figure out how we can either use it to motivate us or put it behind us and focus towards the game on Sunday night.”
The January Bills-Bengals game was suspended after the medical incident involving Hamlin and the NFL later decided not to reschedule the game. The Bengals beat the Bills, 27-10, in an AFC divisional-round game Jan. 22 in Orchard Park.
Big game in Germany
The first of two NFL games to be staged this month in Germany is a high-profile matchup between the Dolphins and the Kansas City Chiefs at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time Sunday in Frankfurt.
The AFC contenders enter the game with identical 6-2 records. But all of the Dolphins’ victories have come against teams with losing records. And the Chiefs are coming off a defeat at Denver in which quarterback Patrick Mahomes, playing while sick, threw two interceptions in an uncharacteristically poor performance.
NFL officials raised the possibility with team owners at last month’s league meeting in New York of playing a larger number of international games. The NFL has already played three overseas games this season in London, with two more scheduled in Germany. In addition to Dolphins-Chiefs, the New England Patriots will play the Indianapolis Colts next Sunday in Frankfurt.
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