Las Vegas Raiders Coach Antonio Pierce is the man in charge of the Raiders’ coaching staff, but he does believe his word to be the be-all and end-all.
Some might view a coaching staff with two former head coaches and a first-time, full-time head coach as problematic, but Pierce welcomes the concept of collaboration.
“It’s not a dictatorship,” Pierce said at the NFL Combine on Thursday. “I don’t run that kind of program, and that’s not how we are. And I’m not worried about other people speaking up or voicing their opinion; I want that.
“I don’t want ‘Yes sirs’ around me, I want people to tell me when I’m right, when I’m wrong, come up with different ideas. And I’m good enough in my own skin. I’m not worried about having former head coaches in here; that doesn’t bother me.
That actually — I don’t even know how that’s a negative, I think that’s the total opposite. When you have the opportunity to bring in people like a Marvin Lewis, a Joe Philbin, to have Rob Ryan around, to have [Tom] Coughlin still be on speed dial, that’s invaluable. So, for me, just putting that whole group together and then mixing them, like we just talked about, with the other guys and coming up with the ideas and really problem solvers, because there’s going to be a lot of things that happen over the next — it’s happening now at the Combine — things that happen over the next couple of weeks and months that I won’t be prepared for and I won’t know.
