Fans were captivated by Antonio Pierce’s nasty post from today regarding what he would do with EDGE Maxx Crosby….
A new coach comes in, and as soon as he loses a few games, starts to make (typically subtle) suggestions that his biggest problems were inherited. In the newcomer’s mind, the predecessor is almost always to blame for the biggest shortcomings he’s facing.
It’s a perpetual, vicious cycle seen across the NFL, but perhaps nowhere as frequently as with the Raiders and their league-high 13 coaches over the last 20 years. Most of the coaches in that span have preached accountability, and then hypocritically tried to evade it on a personal level for as long as possible.
Give credit to current Las Vegas interim coach Antonio Pierce for breaking, or at least pausing, the tiresome trend over the second half of this season. The 45-year-old has more reason than most of the coaches that have come before him to lament the situation he was thrust into and cite it as the first example of what’s held him back.
But he’s refused to make any allusion to that, even after the Raiders were eliminated from playoff contention in a loss at the Indianapolis Colts last week that dropped them to a .500 record (4-4) under Pierce’s leadership.
Everybody who is a straight shooter doesn’t really like the BS,” Raiders receiver Davante Adams said. “You don’t really want anybody who’s going to get in there and blow smoke or whatever it is. You call it how it is and you either love it or hate it…Keep it real about the situation we’re in. That’s who (Pierce) is, and it makes it easy to endorse that type of coach and that type of mindset.”
Adams, the Raiders’ most decorated player, spent most of the year unhappy and warning about how the team’s offensive inconsistency could ultimately sink the season. His premonition has ultimately been realized ahead of Sunday’s regular-season finale against the Denver Broncos scheduled for 1:25 p.m. at Allegiant Stadium but he holds no animosity towards Pierce for not better heeding his words.
That’s because Adams is smart enough to know that the anemic offense is not Pierce’s mess.
It’s difficult to totally separate the head coach from the product on the field especially in an instances like a 3-0 loss to the Minnesota Vikings and a 20-13 defeat to the Miami Dolphins. The former was embarrassing as the lowest-scoring indoor game in NFL history and the latter felt like a what-could-have-been moment because of a puzzling lack of urgency to score points.
