Antonio Pierce, the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, is grappling with two issues: his own lack of experience and the youth of his team. Only with time (and patience) can the young coach overcome both of these.
Upon Pierce’s promotion to full-time head coach, many fans expressed reluctance. Sure, he was a powerful motivator and had a clear understanding of the players’ needs. However, his lack of high-level coaching raised major concerns. He was never an NFL defensive coordinator and wasn’t a head coach at the college level either. Still, as a former player, it seemed he understood this Raiders team better than anyone—certainly better than Josh McDaniels did.
What should we make of Antonio Pierce’s struggles with the Raiders?
To counter his lack of experience, the Raiders hired an overabundance of assistants, many of them former head coaches such as Marvin Lewis. Now, it appears to those on the outside that there are “too many cooks in the kitchen.” What good is all the “experience” in the world if it’s not being applied correctly? In other words, perhaps it’s time for Pierce to rely on his own judgment and make his own decisions. Yes, the Raiders are a young team (very young), but are we entirely sure that this staff is leading them correctly?
Pierce, for his part, seems to think so when addressing the media this week.
“Definitely, experience is everything. Experience is everything. And I think at least for what we built with our coaching staff, with the experience we got there, the former players that’s on our staff, those are reasons that those gentlemen are here, right? To breed confidence, to constantly talk, encourage, remind these guys.”
You can see Pierce visibly question himself on the field, unsure of his decision-making (as he himself admitted).
“We’re going to make mistakes. I’m making mistakes in the games. We all are. Nobody’s playing a perfect game. It’s an imperfect game. But I think when you have younger players, you have to make them understand that you’re not going to be perfect. It’s the lessons of the game of football. We just can’t repeat them. And I think the only thing that frustrates all of us is when we repeat the same mistakes.”
The errors need to stop…
The mental errors on his part (along with those made by the team on the field) are taking a toll. Basically, this is as close to the analogy of “learning on the job” as you can get. Regrettably, one could argue that the Raiders required someone who was already familiar with the job, but that argument is not relevant here.
Something that stands out in what Pierce said this week is that this Raiders team can’t keep making the same mistakes. If that’s the case, we all need to closely monitor the unruly aspects of this team, specifically the missed tackles and poorly-timed penalties. These will serve as indicators to determine whether the Raiders are making progress under Pierce. When dealing with a young roster, you can’t afford to have these types of errors; they tend to become contagious, and at that point, it’s over.
With all that being said, the difficult reality is whether Pierce will receive enough time to deal with both his own shortcomings as a first-year head coach and this youthful Raiders roster. All eyes will be on general manager Tom Telesco and owner Mark Davis this offseason.
*Top Photo: Getty Images
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