The Luke Getsy experiment in Las Vegas might have been Antonio Pierce’s worst hire as head coach of the Raiders and based on a series of comments from Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter, there were a lot of people around the league who believed right away that Pierce was going to regret hiring Getsy.
It was pretty well documented at the time, but Getsy was not Pierce’s first choice to be his offensive coordinator a year ago. In fact, there’s a good chance he was the team’s third choice.
By the time the Raiders had been turned down by current Washington Commanders OC Kliff Kingsbury and one other candidate who chose not to interview for the job, Getsy was one of the few familiar names known to be in the mix for the Raiders offensive coordinator job in February of last year.
When he arrived in Las Vegas, Getsy was advertised as a great offensive mind – particularly when it came to the running game. But he also got a huge endorsement from All-Pro wide receiver Davante Adams at the time of his hiring.
The irony of the Getsy/Adams situation was that Adams was instrumental in bringing Getsy to Vegas in the first place.
“Luke Getsy was connected to Davante [Adams]. That’s how he got the job. They ran it by Davante, which was the right thing to do,” JT the Brick said last year on his Radio Nation Radio show. “Davante worked with Luke Getsy in Green Bay, Wisconsin. They had a really good relationship with Aaron Rodgers and LaFleur, and that’s one of the reasons he got the job.”
According to Carpenter, though, Getsy’s reputation around the league had already taken a significant hit from his time with the Bears.
“A lot of people thought [Getsy] had a shot at being a head coach at one point. He had done very [well] at every stop prior to the Bears and the Raiders were totally convinced he was the right guy,” Carpenter said on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast.
But with Justin Fields’ regression in Chicago and a number of other issues during his tenure with the Bears, some were predicting catastrophe in Las Vegas for Getsy and, ultimately, Pierce. In fact, Carpenter said one NFL person predicted the decision to hire Getsy was going to cost Piece his job.
“One very famous NFL person said… ‘Antonio Pierce just got himself fired,'” Hondo said. “Outside of the Raiders there was not excitement about [his hiring in Las Vegas].”
As it turned out, the “NFL person” was correct and Pierce was never able to recover from a miserable start to the season by Getsy’s offense.
After being fired by the Raiders during the season, Getsy was hired by the Green Bay Packers as a senior offensive assistant in January.
