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It’s not senior week. It’s not a time to mail it in. The Las Vegas Raiders welcome Denver on Sunday afternoon, and coach Antonio Pierce is making it clear that, even though there is no playoff spot on the line, he expects his Raiders to be in top form.
He can’t imagine, really, that even with a 7-9 record following the disappointing loss in Indianapolis on Sunday, his team is going to come out flat-footed against Denver. And he won’t accept the notion that anyone might ask out of the game because there isn’t much left to play for.
Pierce offered a warning, too. If he sees any Raiders dogging it between now and last Sunday afternoon, he will pull them.
“For me, if you’re healthy and you’re ready to go, you play. We’re playing,” Pierce said at his press conference on Monday. “That’s how I was raised in this game. And that’s how I see the game. If you’re able to play, you play and you play at your fullest ability. If we have guys I feel are not doing it, we’ll remove them from the game and from practice and go with somebody that wants to play. But I don’t see that being a problem. I haven’t seen want-to being an issue with us.”
Week 18 Win Would Boost Antonio Pierce to 5-4
Of course, Pierce has every reason to make sure that his team is going full-bore in Week 18 against the Broncos, the team that a much different Raiders team toppled in the season opener in Denver. He is fighting to go from Antonio Pierce, interim coach to Antonio Pierce, full-time Raiders coach. The team was 3-5 when he took over from Josh McDaniels on Halloween, and though the group as been much happier and played better football, the record is not that much better—they’re 4-4 under Pierce.
He’s like to keep the job. Pierce would like to bump that to 5-4 in Week 18, because he knows it’ll be on his resume. That’s true of the players, too.
“Unless you plan on retiring or not playing in the NFL or coaching in the NFL, this is still on your resume,” Pierce said. “I think, it’s no different at any level—you always look at the last four or five or six games of a season, how a team plays, how they’re coached, how their coach coached, and vice-versa. I think for us it’s still part of the process of evaluation.
“To be honest, I think our guys take pride in playing football. I think they love football, I think we got guys here who love football. I think we got coaches here that want to coach and see our guys win. It’s 2024, it’s a new year. It’s a great opportunity to go out with a bang at home, get our fan base excited for what is coming in the future.”
Raiders Have Built a ‘Solid Foundation’
Regardless of what happens in Week 18, Pierce knows that his coaching future is very much on the line, whether it is staying in place with the Raiders or moving on to another organization. The players have rallied around him and everyone in the team’s building knows that.
But that’s not as well-known around the rest of the NFL. If the Raiders don’t keep Pierce, he is going to have to find a spot elsewhere, with an eye on still being a head coach. He has made his case before, but he said the one thing that should stand out is that this group has laid a solid foundation for what a return to real Raiders football could look like.
“At the end of the day, everything is going to be looked at in wins and losses,” Pierce said. “I think that’s fair. That’s what it is about. I said that right at the very beginning, it is production-based, it’s about wins and losses. But I also think it is about, what are you building as a foundation? For the most part these past eight or nine weeks has been a solid foundation that we built as a team and an organization.”
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