After just one full season on the job, the Antonio Pierce era is over in Las Vegas and the Raiders are back to a place they have been seven times in the last 13 years… looking for a head coach.
There will be plenty of time to break down what went wrong during Pierce’s tenure with the Raiders, but for now the conversation around the team is about their next head coach.
Mike Vrabel has been heavily linked to the Raiders for several months, but there are reasons to believe he will be returning to New England now that Jarod Mayo has been fired.
On Tuesday, The Athletic released a column featuring eight potential head coaching fits for the Raiders, but there is some reason to believe Mark Davis and Tom Brady are going to make a coaching hire that isn’t on anyone’s radar.
NFL insider Josina Anderson talked on Tuesday about the Raiders speaking with two “behind the scenes” candidates and Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter made similar reference today on his daily podcast.
He was vague, but Hondo clearly sent a message that the top candidates for the job in Las Vegas aren’t necessarily the names everyone has been talking about.
”There are plenty of very good candidates out there that maybe aren’t being talked about and I’ll leave it there,” Carpenter said on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast.
The reports from Anderson and Carpenter weren’t related (two separate outlets), but they both point to the idea that the Raiders are down the road a little further in their coaching search than what meets the eye.
Both actually alluded to the notion that the delay in firing Pierce was related to conversations the team was having with these mystery candidates.
It’s also worth noting that Carpenter said in December that if the Raiders move on from Pierce they will already have a good idea of who their next head coach is going to be.
“I can tell you that I’ve been told by enough people who know Tom [Brady] very well, if [Antonio Pierce] is terminated, he knows exactly who’s coming in,” Carpenter said of Brady on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast. “Now they’ll have to go through all the rules of interviewing a bunch of people, but he’ll know who he’s bringing in.”
From everything that has been said to this point, Pierce had earned the respect of Davis, but the decision-makers in the building clearly think they will be able to hire an upgrade.
Within the next week or two, we’re going to find out who that is.
x: @raidersbeat
Going down the rabbit hole again! Young team or not,you can’t build chemistry this way.Coach AP was A Rookie and with what he had to work with not sure if anyone else would have done better but once again we will ride the coach roller coaster until the wheels fall off.im looking forward to root for silver and black even if they will be bringing up the rear of the AFC
Dude saw what happened in Chicago the prior 2 years and said we need some of that in Vegas. Then yesterday says he didn’t trust his gut when it came to qb out of camp. Let another man do HIS job. Had to go
Bill O’Brien
MD does not know football and let others, who weren’t objective, make the decision on HC. Asking players if they approved of AP was MD’s answer to his lack of management and football acumen. Players who like a guy will not be objective. More in depth, wider scope assessments are needed in such big decisions. Brady knows football from playing in the league. Now, will he make good football and management decisions with TT? Well, they’ll be better than before. But,Telesco got lucky with Bowers and JPJ. I’m not sold on him, I hope TB has the authority and vision to assess and be good at this role. Which means he’ll need to steer TT away from ill advised moves. Like mediocre picks after first few rounds, and FA mistakes.
It sounds like the people writing these comments should be owners of a team they know so much? 🙄
Yeah really. Like TT gets lucky with the best tight end on the planet, but needs major help drafting. Doesn’t even make any sense. The guy can’t win no matter what he does if he gets lucky with his great pics, but needs major help with everything else. What’s wrong with people? GM’s aren’t fortunetellers.. They do the best they have with what they have, but players have to play. If you draft player who had no problems in college,and he ends up always injured in the NFL is that really the GM‘s fault
AP wasn’t qualified to be HC, he doesn’t even have coordinator experience! His retention was due to his success last year and to what happened with Bissacia not being retained. I thought it was a mistake to basically hand AP the job without doing a thorough search for other qualified candidates. Now, I had high hopes that Brady would be an asset for selecting the next HC, but if reports are true that the team is considering Belichek that really raises a flag on whether he will actually hurt the process more than actually help. We don’t need an outdated retread as our next HC! Please stay in North Carolina and please no repeat of the Gruden fiasco.
I agree with above fan no retreads a good solid offensive minded tough coach and solid draft picks a above average QB and stick with the process.