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New Raiders coach Antonio Pierce said that before the Week 9 game against the Giants, his first as an NFL head coach, he felt something rare: There were butterflies in his stomach.
“Butterflies,” Pierce said on Sunday afternoon. “Have had it three times as a professional, my first game in the NFL, and the Super Bowl. And then our first game as a head coach. That was special.”
Special indeed, because not only did Antonio Pierce make his Raiders and NFL coaching debut on Sunday (still with an ‘interim’ tag), he did so with a resounding 30-6 win over the Giants, which was his team for five seasons. And he did something that former coach Josh McDaniels never seemed to be able to do: Get his team to play motivated and aggressive.
Asked what his message was to inspire that kind of play, Pierce said he tapped into a very basic shared emotion with his team: a love of football.
“Just let us go back to our roots,” Pierce said he told his team. “How did we all get here? You know, I said in the press conference (on Wednesday), in Pop Warner, you just had that joy and love for the game. And I just felt like we’d lost that for a bit. And like I told you came back on Thursday if you were at practice you would have saw it. Friday, same exact thing. And then just their focus throughout the building.”
Antonio Pierce’s Raiders Looks Like a Different Team
For Antonio Pierce and the Raiders, the difference was obvious in Sunday’s game. The Giants are indeed a poor team that had quarterback Daniel Jones get injured (again) during the game, but it is also true that the Raiders dominated New York. For a team reeling off back-to-back blowout losses to Chicago and Detroit, any win would have been welcome.
But a walloping like the Raiders delivered showed that this is not the same team it was under McDaniels. In just a few short days, it seems the entire Raiders culture has shifted. There’s still work to be done, but Pierce has certainly given this team back its joy.
“I mean, obviously, there’s videos of the guys playing hoop, having fun, just enjoying themselves,” Pierce said. “But then we went to the grass, it was work and business, and they understand that. But more importantly, they want to do it for each other. They just want that feeling that joy that they’re now celebrating dancing and having a great time in that locker room.”
Raiders Ran More, Were More Aggressive
Antonio Pierce also talked about a Raiders change in mindset he wanted to bring to the remaining games this season. He wants to push running back Josh Jacobs back to the forefront of the offense and be aggressive when it is warranted. Jacobs had 98 yards on 26 carries in the game, easily his most productive outing of the season.
He also encouraged his team to take some risks, like the second-quarter, 50-yard pass from Aidan O’Connell to a diving Tre Tucker, the longest pass play for the Raiders all season.
“We talked about being more aggressive, letting it go,” Pierce said. “I mean, you don’t want to call the game scared. Not myself as a head coach, nor did I want the OC (offensive coordinator) or the quarterback to feel like I didn’t believe him. So we felt good about something, we were gonna let it roll. And you know, you saw the shot there with Tucker. You got a guy who can run, run him. And he was run running. And he caught that ball as a great throw by Aidan.”
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