Raiders’ Pierce Takes Fans Inside Thinking Process
Coach Antonio Pierce of the Las Vegas Raiders has done virtually everything right since taking the reigns of Raider Nation last season on an interim basis.
Pierce earned the permanent head coaching job, and now the Raiders are marching confidently into his first offseason at the helm.
Brilliantly, he won the locker room with his genuine approach to the game people love and subsequently won over Raider Nation and, ultimately, Mark Davis.
Appearing on the Pivot podcast recently, he let Raider Nation into his mindset, and his usual openness painted a terrific picture for all to see.
“The stage, as players, is a platform," Pierce said. "I am one of 32. They don’t all look like this, they don’t talk like this, they don’t rock like this. They didn’t do what we did.”
Of course, Pierce is 100 percent correct. He has played at a high level in the National Football League, which isn’t the case with all coaches or even most.
In a synthetic world, Las Vegas Raiders Coach Antonio Pierce stands out as authentic.
Darrell Craig Harris, Raiders Today
But Pierce isn’t about himself. Everything he does is about the team, and he opened up about how he explained that to the team.
“One of the things that I told our players is, certain people in this building can’t do what we do," Pierce said. "We can do what they do, they can’t ever be and do what we’ve done as players. Laced some cleats up. Going out there on Sundays and going to war, going to battle with one another.”
Reflectively, a humbled Pierce said: “I don’t take it lightly, I am so humbled to be honest, and honored to be in this position. More than anything else, not like a player wanting to win a Super Bowl, I want to do right. I want to set the stage for other players to have this opportunity. So they don’t look at us, and say: ‘Well, because he didn’t go to Harvard, Yale, John Cornell, he’s not an Ivy League guy, he wasn’t mister, President of his school, whatever it may be, he can lead men. He can move rocks, move stones. He can get people to do what they didn’t think that they could do. Make people believe.”
Pierce then explained how he did it while not referencing Free Agency directly, showing us how he will sell the Silver and Black when Free Agency opens next month.
“Really setting a culture that you see on Sundays and that is like, ‘damn that that is what it is for," Pierce said. "I want to sign up for that. I want to be with those dudes. I want to hang out with them in the locker room.”
Pierce added an important caveat that fans rarely consider, but he does.
“Nobody sees the work that we do, Monday through Saturday," Pierce said. "The grind, because all things are fun and games.”
Pierce is a man who, even retired as a player, looks chiseled from granite and looks like he could play today. While his demeanor looks tough, I can tell you that, knowing him personally, he can be tough, but his heart is genuine.
Pierce is appreciative and is wise enough to understand the value of people. An adoring husband and father, he is old enough to know what his new job means and wise enough to know bravado can only get you so far.
The reason Pierce has done all that, behind the superstar player, the coach is a man. He needs people, a real man, one secure in himself, and one that isn’t too big to acknowledge for him to reach his dreams.
That is what makes Pierce great. So many others use people, and he appreciates people and the moment.
Pierce said, “To be one of 32, to be a former player, to play at the highest level, to win a Super Bowl, and to now do it as a head coach of an NFL team, especially the team that you grew up rooting for in the Raiders, come on man, what are we talking about."
The NFL Draft will be held in Detroit, Mich., on April 25-27, 2024. The Las Vegas Raiders currently hold the No. 13 overall pick.
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