In a span of five days in 2023, the same NFL team lost one game while scoring zero points and won another by putting up 63. This is the beauty of the Las Vegas Raiders.
Last year’s Raiders team pruned one of the final branches from Bill Belichick’s coaching tree by firing Josh McDaniels after 25 games and a 9-16 record. In his place came the linebacker that helped erase the 2007 New England Patriots’ 19-0 season, Antonio Pierce. Pierce, running a head coaching campaign of equal parts respect for his players and acknowledgment he was not, in fact, Josh McDaniels, went 5-4 at the helm to lock down the full time job for 2024.
Now comes the hard part. Pierce inherits a team that punched above its weight class to wrap up 2023. His starting quarterback will either be:
- Aidan O’Connell, a 2023 fourth round pick who was, statistically, that year’s third-worst quarterback (ahead of only Mac Jones and Zach Wilson), or
- Gardner Minshew, a cromulent backup who can operate in a limited system and is already on his fourth NFL team in six seasons.
His top wideout is a 31-year-old coming off his least efficient season since 2015. The running back who led the league in rushing yards in 2022 is now a Green Bay Packer. The edge rush beyond superstar Maxx Crosby will rely on a player who had two sacks between 2021 and 2022 continuing his Pierce-coded breakthrough.
And yet, it feels stupid to write the Raiders off in 2024. Let’s look at how a man who’d never been more than a linebackers coach at the NFL level can continue thriving.
The Raiders can survive with a competent offense. But that’s a big ask.
Las Vegas has one of the league’s grimmer quarterback situations; a timeshare between veteran and young prospect, only instead of a vaunted first round pick, the guy the Raiders hope to mold into a franchise quarterback was a Day 3 pick.
That doesn’t mean Aidan O’Connell can’t emerge as a reliable starter, but his rookie numbers might. On the surface, he was viable; 12 touchdown passes in 11 games against seven interceptions and a 62 percent completion rate. Those aren’t world beating numbers, but his 83.9 passer rating was better than fellow young QBs like Desmond Ridder, Kenny Pickett, Sam Howell, or Mac Jones.
Except, well, all those guys got traded this offseason by teams uninterested in developing their talent any further. O’Connell remains, in part because he finished with a flourish. After a rocky start, he threw nine touchdowns against one interception in his final six games, going 3-3 in the process. He also threw for only 212 yards per game, was reliably immobile and averaged a loss of seven yards per sack.
This left his overall impact, even in his best stretch, below average in terms of expected points added (EPA).
Those numbers paint him as a similar caliber quarterback as the guy who’ll join him on the depth chart this fall. Minshew was a Pro Bowler in 2023, which should tell you all you need to know about the quarterback availability at the NFL’s all-star game. The young journeyman is a reliable backup whose rise has been limited by his struggle to make tough throws in the intermediate range. He blanks defenders in the middle of the field, creating avoidable turnovers with frustrating throws.
Gardner Minshew just really wanted to throw an interception on this drive. #Colts#ForTheShoe#Jaguars#DUUUVAL#INDvsJAX pic.twitter.com/7Ez5Cf65fD
— Chris Shepherd (@NFLscheme) October 15, 2023
Per SIS, Minshew completed just 53.9 percent of his throws to travel between 10 and 19 yards downfield in 2023 and 47.5 percent of all throws to go at least 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. Part of this can be attributed to his inability to remain set in the pocket; his penchant for scrambling, even with minimal pressure, forces him into throws on the run and bad decisions paired with bad footwork.
Sometimes, this works out and he wows you with a big play. Sometimes it fails horribly. Now he gets an offense of playmakers who can bail him out in stretches, though it’s fair to wonder if we’ve seen the last of a truly dominant Davante Adams.
Adams, in part due to quarterback issues, averaged only 6.5 yards per target in 2023 — 103rd best in the NFL and by far his worst number since emerging as a true WR1 in 2016. His 1.95 yards per route run, however, ranked 25th between Ja’Marr Chase and Michael Pittman, which is more optimistic for his 2024.
But Adams will turn 32 years old in December. While his size will help mitigate the loss of speed that comes with age, he may cede some of his absurd target share (175 in 2023!) to Jakobi Meyers and Tre Tucker, the latter of whom was sneakily effective in short bursts as a rookie last fall. More importantly, O’Connell or Minshew will have two high profile tight ends to turn short targets into big gains in rookie first rounder Brock Bowers and 2023 second round selection Michael Mayer.
That’s a useful support system for a binary star of flawed quarterbacks, particularly if Zamir White can step into the RB1 role for which he’s been primed. But the biggest asset the Raiders have isn’t on the offensive side of the ball.
Pierce turned the Las Vegas defense into a genuinely scary unit last fall
Here’s how the Raiders defense looked in eight games under McDaniels:
- Points allowed per game: 23.4
- Yards allowed per game: 338
- Expected pointed added (EPA) allowed per play: 0.038 (26th best in the NFL)
Here’s how the Raiders defense looked in nine games under Pierce:
- Points allowed per game: 16
- Yards allowed per game: 325
- EPA allowed per play: -0.141 (second best in the NFL)
That’s a stark turnaround, even if the team was giving up a similar amount of yardage each week. What sparked the change? Pierce’s group showed up like a bunch of hungry goblins late in the season. Las Vegas had eight turnovers forced in eight games under McDaniels, six of which came in tilts against the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions. Under Pierce, they forced 14 in nine games, including five in a shellacking of the Los Angeles Chargers that sealed deposed head coach Brandon Staley’s fate.
Malcolm Koonce played a significant part of this glow-up. The former third round pick was an afterthought his first two seasons in the league and for the first half of 2023. But after McDaniels was fired, his snap share increased and the former University at Buffalo star shined; all eight of his sacks last year and 14 of his 17 quarterback hits came after Pierce took the reins.
Koonce isn’t yet a full-time player — even in his rise he still played more than two-thirds of the team’s defensive snaps only once, and that was in the final game of 2023 — but his athleticism has shined under Pierce, making him the perfect janitor to clean up the messes Crosby creates. That’s before counting for new arrival Christian Wilkins, who’ll ensure there’s no room to step up in the pocket thanks to his penetration in the middle of the line.
This also glosses over the fact that, even before Wilkins arrival, the Raiders fielded the league’s best run defense under Pierce by a wide margin!
This would have been a boon for your typical, secondary-deficient Raiders team. But last year’s squad showed a pass defense promise we haven’t seen in Las Vegas (and it had been a while since we’d seen it in Oakland, too). Trevon Moehrig is emerging as a potential All-Pro safety. Cornerback Jack Jones was a New England Patriots castoff who allowed a passer rating of just 63.0 in seven games last season. Jakorian Bennett is flawed, but should be better in his second season as a pro.
This all suggests the incredible finish Pierce spurred in 2023 can be replicated in 2024, even if opposing offenses have a little more tape to churn. And with a soft finish to this year’s schedule, another rally could be en route.
***
Look, I’ve gotta wrap this up. I could easily go 3,000 words on the Raiders, who may be 2024’s most interesting team. There’s a lot to like about this roster, and this coach, even though most of the optimism hinges on a tiny sample size.
Las Vegas has the potential to compete for a playoff spot and a head coach that was able to glean the most from his guys when given the opportunity. The question now is whether Antonio Pierce can keep that going or if the bounce and optimism that comes from firing Josh McDaniels is a one-time thing.
If I had to bet, I’d lean in to the over on Las Vegas’s line of 6.5 wins this season.
