Antonio Pierce may have turned down the opportunity to move into Josh McDaniels’ office, but he has been working hard to eventually move into the “Big Room.”
LaVar Arrington was a former teammate of Pierce who coached with him for two years at Long Beach Poly in California, and Arrington says Pierce has an “amazing” plan to move forward with the roster.
Speaking this week on Raider Nation Radio’s Unnecessary Roughness with Q Myers, Arrington said Pierce already knows some of the people he wants to bring in after the season…
“You guys got a good one in Antonio Pierce. He’s not only a good dude, but he’s the type of guy that if he has a fair opportunity, he’ll definitely pull in the right type of people. He told me guys that he’s looking to bring in, and if that really happens that is an amazing addition to the team. You guys will have to get that from him. If he pulls together what it looks like he’s going to pull together, he is definitely positioning this team to have the same type of feel to the teams that he played on.”
As for his qualities as a head coach, Arrington said Pierce is well qualified to take the Raiders full-time job after the season…
“Just knowing him through the years as a player. [He was] just always a super, super smart player. [He] understood everybody’s positions, understood what everybody was trying to do and could explain it in a way where he made everybody around him better. For him to be in the position that he’s in now, it’s a been a lot of hard work. We started off coaching, he was at Long Beach Poly, and I never had any aspirations of coaching, but he actually made me believe that I could be a good coach and I started coaching at Long Beach Poly with him… As a coach, his organization, the way he ran our program in high school was that of a college/pro program. He’s been preparing for this for a long time.”
Through four games, the reviews on Pierce have been mostly positive. The Raiders are 2-2 with Pierce as the interim head coach, and the two losses came against two of the best teams in the AFC (Miami and Kansas City).
The next five games will be key for Pierce, and the schedule seems to be generally favorable going forward. The Raiders have consecutive home games against the Vikings and Chargers, followed by road games in Kansas City and Indianapolis. They close out the season against the suddenly surging Broncos at home in week 17.
twitter: @raidersbeat
Knowing Mark Davis he’ll dig up another ex coach from somewhere and hire him..and Pierce will be a head coach somewhere else and be successful there.