Breaking: In 2024, the Raiders won’t make the same mistakes under their current head coach……
The previous season was one of the most dramatic in NFL history for the Las Vegas Raiders. Prior to the sacking of Head Coach Josh McDaniels, there were accusations that he was lighting into players and coaches for a variety of strange reasons including parody of the New England Patriots. Fortunately for Las Vegas, once McDaniels was replaced by linebackers coach Antonio Pierce, the squad had a significant upturn. Remarkably for Las Vegas, the franchise has experienced this in previous seasons
Despite signing a massive deal in 2018, the Oakland Raiders failed to gain any momentum under famous coach John Gruden. Following his very offensive emails sent while coaching the Washington Redskins, Gruden was dismissed, and Rich Bisaccia took over as head coach. Following a 3-5 start to the season under Gruden, Bisaccia turned in a strong performance to guide the club to a 10-7 record and a postseason spot
In the summer of 2022, instead of elevating Bisaccia to the post of head coach, they went out and signed McDaniels, who was the more desirable candidate, in an effort to strengthen the squad. Recall that McDaniels was an utter failure as the head coach of the Denver Broncos at the time. As expected, when McDaniels benched veteran quarterback Derek Carr in favour of Jimmy Garoppolo, the club was a complete failure this season
Similar to this, Pierce did well, helping Las Vegas end with an 8-9 record after they had a 3-5 start under McDaniels. Pierce was able to provide a cohesive strength to the squad when they defeated the Kansas City Chiefs late in the season, even after benching Garoppolo in favour of a relatively unknown rookie quarterback named Aiden O’Connell
The group must own its errors and choose the player who has performed well for them so far this season. Even though Pierce may not have as strong of a track record as some of the other coaches available this offseason, with the roster he has, he would project to a playoff squad, which may take some other coaches some time to adjust to. After using temporary coaches for the most of the season, Pierce is also free to choose his own coaching staff
Though this squad doesn’t always choose the best course of action, it seems like Las Vegas is making the correct choice. Even though I think Pierce is the best coach for this group, I would anticipate that Las Vegas would attempt to develop a potent offence in the summer by hiring someone like offensive coordinator Brian Callahan of the Bengals
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