One of the most important jobs Antonio Pierce has as a head coach is putting together a good coaching staff. If we're giving out grades, he gets an F for the offensive staff he put together for the Las Vegas Raiders.
Offensive coordinator Luke Getsy, offensive line coach James Cregg and quarterbacks coach Rich Scangarello have all been fired just nine games into their Raiders tenure. While nobody is going to argue that those three deserve to say, why were they even hired in the first place?
According to Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer, this was a foreseeable issue due to how Pierce decided to construct the staff.
"Part of the issue to this point, as I've heard it, is the way Pierce patched the staff together, rather than making sure there was alignment on both sides of the ball," Breer wrote. "That led to coaches having to invest time teaching other coaches, which didn't help with the players."
Considering how much experience Pierce added to the coaching staff, it's baffling that nobody stopped him and expressed how important it was for him to have some level of cohesion, especially on offense.
It just makes it seem like Pierce isn't getting good advice. If he doesn't know how to hire the right coaching staff, the Raiders are in serious trouble. That's the No. 1 job of a CEO-type head coach.
Pierce doesn't call plays and his game management is horrific. The only hope he has is hiring an amazing offensive coaching staff. He's proven that he doesn't really know how to do that.
This is pretty damning and could play a factor in whether or not the Raiders want to retain him for another year. Las Vegas can't afford to keep being irrelevant and doubling down on Pierce could set the franchise back even further.
