Two years ago, the Las Vegas Raiders’ interim coach had the players’ support and waited for owner Mark Davis to go through the interview process before filling the full-time position.
“We went to the playoffs, and we all left the locker room that day thinking that he was going to get it,” one player said last week.
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Well, we all know now that Rich Bisaccia did not get the job, with Davis instead opting to hire the duo of Josh McDaniels as head coach and Dave Ziegler as general manager. That obviously was a mistake, and here we are again, with Davis deciding whether he should rubber stamp interim coach Antonio Pierce after a 5-4 finish that was better than the record indicates.
The dozen players who remain from the 2021 roster are even louder in their support for Pierce, especially star players Maxx Crosby and Josh Jacobs. Crosby is even trying to get it trending on social media.
— 🦅MaddMaxx🦅 (@CrosbyMaxx) January 12, 2024
So, this raises the obvious question:
Why would Davis pick Pierce when he didn’t go with Bisaccia?
The difference starts with Jon Gruden and ends with Davis’ desire to return to the winning days and style of his late father, Al. The word “culture” is grossly overused in football circles these days, but the Raiders of the 1970s and ’80s had their own unique identity and customs.
This is Davis’ fifth coaching search in 11 years, and it took him until the third try in 2018 to get the guy he always wanted in Gruden. Gruden had left the Raiders after an ego clash with Al Davis and won a Super Bowl ring with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (against the Raiders, no less) before making generational wealth as an ESPN broadcaster.
Davis then topped that when he gave Gruden a $100 million contract (and called it the happiest day of his life). Gruden had a tumultuous 3 1/2 years, from the Khalil Mack trade to the Antonio Brown soap opera to blown draft picks to numerous COVID-19 compliance fines to his ultimate resignation over racist, homophobic and misogynistic emails.
The Raiders were 3-1 when the emails were leaked in 2021 on a Friday, then lost the following Sunday before Gruden resigned on the Monday. They won their next two games and were 5-2 when receiver Henry Ruggs III was arrested on charges of DUI resulting in death following a car crash that killed 23-year-old Tina Tintor and her dog. Ruggs later pleaded guilty and is serving three to 10 years in a Nevada state prison.
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The Raiders lost five of their next six games following Ruggs’ arrest and were 6-7 before winning their last four games by a combined 12 points and making the playoffs. Davis credits Bisaccia with connecting with the players and leading the turnaround, but I am pretty sure he believes the Raiders would’ve made the playoffs if the emails weren’t leaked and Gruden was still the coach.
Though the remaining Raiders players are convinced Davis regrets not giving Bisaccia the full-time job, I agree to a point. Davis has acknowledged he doesn’t know football like his dad did, and he does want to win badly, so he embraced the carrot of the “Patriots Way,” thinking their success was replicable and believing the national media when it said McDaniels was in high demand.
It wasn’t and he wasn’t.
Davis fired McDaniels on Halloween, and Pierce took over a 3-5 team that had players slamming their helmets on the turf in frustration. They lit cigars in the locker room to celebrate McDaniels’ firing (and beating the New York Giants), respected Pierce’s success as a player and responded to his passion.
Davis wanted Pierce to focus on leading and not worry too much about the schemes, but that was selling the former Super Bowl-winning team captain and linebackers coach short. Pierce worked well with defensive coordinator Patrick Graham and showed he knows his X’s and O’s and how to run a practice.
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Players got better as the season went on, and they also played with discipline. The Raiders had the fewest penalties in the league, the most shocking stat here in the past two decades. And … they never stopped playing with emotion for Pierce. (Is that sustainable for a whole season? Well, it was for nine games, and maybe the Detroit Lions’ Dan Campbell is the new model for coaching hires — a fiery former player who knows his way around a whiteboard.)
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Now, the offensive staff is going to need an overhaul — as well as the quarterback and offensive line groups — but Davis has much fewer questions about the team’s future with Pierce than he did with Bisaccia.
Bisaccia was a special teams coach who deferred to offensive coordinator Greg Olson and defensive coordinator Gus Bradley, and the play calling at the end of the playoff loss to the Cincinnati Bengals bugged Davis. General manager Mike Mayock was set to walk the plank for draft misses of Damon Arnette, Tanner Muse, Alex Leatherwood and others while quarterback Derek Carr’s future was up in the air, and that team had no real strengths other than Crosby, Jacobs and the two kickers.
Pierce, meanwhile, worked with Graham and turned the Raiders defense into a top-10 unit in points allowed, and a lot of promising pieces are returning for Pierce and interim GM Champ Kelly. Pierce even called quarterback Aidan O’Connell his “BFF” and got more out of him, with the mobility-challenged rookie finishing with eight touchdowns and no interceptions in the last four games.
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There is a better foundation laid than there was two years ago, and assuming the Tennessee Titans don’t hire Pierce after his virtual interview this weekend, bringing him back makes more sense than Bisaccia did.
The Raiders are busy interviewing general manager candidates (Kelly gets his turn Saturday), and we’re still waiting for the Jim Harbaugh media blitz to fully hit. But when Davis thinks back to the locker room scene after the win last week — with current and former players smoking cigars and talking about what it means to be a Raider — he knows he has an exciting option in his back pocket with Pierce.
He didn’t feel that way two years ago.
(Top photo of Mark Davis and Antonio Pierce: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
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