Coming off an historically embarrassing loss, the Las Vegas Raiders did a 180 and motivated themselves into an equally historical victory. The Silver and Black apparently turned their Week 14 disaster into a night that will go down in history under the direction of interim coach Antonio Pierce.
Being shut out and losing by a field goal would have been grounds for firing on any other squad. Fortunately for Pierce, the Raiders already fired Josh McDaniels a few weeks ago. Rather than cave and let the wheels fall off, Pierce rallied the troops. As a result, the Raiders dropped 63 points on their vaunted AFC West rivals. The lopsided thrashing was so bad that the Chargers took a page from Mark Davis’s book—they cleaned house on Friday.
Back to the loss to the Vikings in Week 14, it was star wideout Davante Adams who said it best, according to Pierce.
“I’m going to reference what Davante [Adams] said last week: we were on the wrong side of history. Well, we’re on the right side now. And that’s the way we want to be. But it’s like anything: turnovers, points—they always come in bunches, and for us, it became a frenzy, right? You saw it on defense. You saw it on offense.”
Pierce is right; once the party started, there was no chance for the Chargers. Adams, for his part, bounced back from Week 14—he eclipsed the century mark with 101 receiving yards and found the end zone once. Even the run game was effective on a night where Josh Jacobs was inactive—both Ameer Abdullah and Zamir White each averaged more than four yards, respectively. Where’s this Raiders offense been?
This one will go into the record books for the Las Vegas Raiders
The Raiders’ 63-point score is unlikely to be surpassed anytime soon—perhaps not in our lifetime. Coach Antonio Pierce was fully aware of what was happening on Thursday. To his credit, he didn’t take his foot off the pedal.
“We knew at halftime what the record was. I was made aware of it. We wanted to be aggressive regardless of what the score was. Even if we only had 21 or 10, we were going to be aggressive. That was our mindset. I talked to our team about it last week about playing better in the second half, and I thought we did.”
It remains to be seen whether Pierce will be retained without the “interim” tag this offseason by the Raiders. Still, the former linebacker certainly etched his place in team history as his squad responded to him after a loss that might’ve demoralized most teams this close to the season’s end.
One thing’s for sure: You have to wonder if this is the beginning of something or an anomaly.
*Top Photo: Official Raiders Website
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