Las Vegas Raiders interim head coach Antonio Pierce is 2-0 after taking over for Josh McDaniels. Some applaud the Super Bowl champion for getting the Silver and Black back to .500. However, Dan Patrick isn’t one of those people.
So, why does Patrick seem unimpressed by Pierce winning his first two games with the Raiders?
Heading into the 2023 NFL season with names such as Davante Adams, Maxx Crosby and Josh Jacobs on the roster, many viewed the Raiders as a team that should push for a playoff appearance. This fact sheds light into Patrick’s stance.
Dan Patrick believes the Raiders are supposed to be a good team
While Las Vegas was 3-5 at one point this season, leading to the firing of McDaniels, it wasn’t because the team lacks talent. The Raiders aren’t the Carolina Panthers or New York Giants, being a team that’s clearly going through a rebuild or a team that needs to hit the reset button.
The Silver and Black have arguably the league’s best wide receiver in Davante Adams, one of the best pass rushers in Maxx Crosby, and the current rushing champion in Josh Jacobs; the Raiders’ terrible start is due to the underperformance of the squad, which for now is attributed to McDaniels.
Las Vegas turning the ship around under Pierce with wins over the Giants and New York Jets should be expected from the team, according to Patrick. The Giants will be in the race for Caleb Williams. Meanwhile, the Jets’ offense is nonexistent after Aaron Rodgers went down with an Achilles injury in Week 1.
“You guys are supposed to be good,” Patrick said Monday on “The Dan Patrick Show.” “Once again, you have an elite running back, an elite wide receiver, and an elite edge rusher. How many teams have that? And how many of them are playoff teams? You guys should be good.”
Will Mark Davis hold onto Antonio Pierce?
Pierce is doing something McDaniels struggled with during his tenure with the Silver and Black: beating floundering teams. This season, the Raiders lost on the road to the Chicago Bears who didn’t have Justin Fields. Chicago started an undrafted rookie at quarterback, Tyson Bagent.
The 45-year-old has Las Vegas at 5-5 and will now face the most challenging part of the schedule. Ahead of the Raiders are the Kansas City Chiefs twice, the Miami Dolphins, the Los Angeles Chargers, and the Minnesota Vikings. These are all teams that could be in the playoffs at the end of this season. It’s not an easy road for Pierce.
Nonetheless, if the Raiders can pull out some unexpected wins and put themselves in a spot to clinch a playoff berth, the question will be whether Pierce has done enough to keep the position. Las Vegas would be back in a familiar situation, mirroring Rich Bisaccia.
Bisaccia guided the team to the playoffs in 2021 as an interim head coach. However, the Raiders didn’t give him the job permanently. Instead, owner Mark Davis went with McDaniels, and well, that was a very costly mistake—literally. Is keeping Las Vegas in the playoff hunt enough for Davis to give Pierce an entire season at the helm?
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(by GTHANG)
No Dan, we were supposed to be good LAST YEAR. We were coming off a playoff berth and added Davante Adams, remember?
This year we were coming off a 6-11 disaster.
We added a $6 million backup QB with an injury history and paid him $70 mil to be a starter. And we passed on making a deal for one of the coveted rookie QBs and instead went with an unheralded 4th rounder.
That sounds like a recipe for success?
AP is getting the most out of what he has, for which he should be applauded and rewarded. But pretending the Raiders are a stacked playoff favorite is delusional.
(By Tony Brucks)
Yeah Josh McIdiot came close to destroying my Raiders.
Coach Pierce has my Raiders turned around and headed in the right direction. We were supposed to be winning already thats true but when you have an idiot for a coach like Josh its takes time for the team to find its true identity and figure out everything.
Coach Pierce had done an amazing job winning his first 2 games while still putting the pieces of this Raiders puzzle together.
In the meantime who is up for a fish fry this sunday? Count me in!
Bring your own tartar sauce!
There were two moves that McDaniels made that I was not happy with. One was replacing Gus Bradley with Patrick Graham. Bradley did wonders for the Raider defense and he was a believer in the 4-3. McDaniles also believed in the 4-3 alignment. So what does he do? He fires Bradley and brings in a 3-4 coach in Graham to run his defense. The result was that the Raiders blew some big leads last year. But the defense seems to be playing well this year. Can we attribute this to the players or to Graham? I’m not sure if I’m impressed with Graham as our defensive coordinator. The other bad move was the release of Derick Carr who held most of the franchise passing records. If we had Carr now there would be a very good chance of making the playoffs at least as a wild card team. I think O’Connell has a good future, but he is still a rookie and will need time to develop. The signing of Garapolo is one signing that Raider management is going to regret. IMO he is the most overrated QB in the league. Unlike Carr he never had a single 4000 yard season.
We were ‘supposed’ to be good??? What was vegas saying? Did anyone, and I mean ANYONE predict 10 wins and a playoff birth? I saw some semi-homers going with 9 wins, but they were mostly outliers.
Did DP have a preseason prognostication? Weekly picks? I don’t listen to the guy, but these blowhards typically have some kind of picks based on their ‘expertise’…..
“Oh, I didn’t pick them, but I knew they would win the whole time”….clown
The thing is the whole system they are using is still McDaniels, they didn’t change anything except some play calls, and some guys that were crybabies are happy because they are getting attention now. It’s like a bunch of kids that couldn’t handle real life, now they have a coach who is soft and our team is going to end up soft.
It feels like McDaniels was one extreme, and now we went to another extreme. We need someone in the middle.