Antonio Pierce Coaching For His Life Against The Chargers?

Hello, beautiful people, boys and girls, Raider fans alike. We're back. We're back, and it's 2025. New year, same Raiders? Well, we're going to discuss all that because we got 24 hours before the Raiders play their final game. Week 18 against the Chargers. The season did not go according to plan. Some decisions were made that were not good. We're going to discuss AP's future. We're going to discuss that report that Chador Sanders is not a first-round pick. We're going to talk about Aiden, and we're going to get to viewer comments from last week. So if you want your comments read out loud, questions answered, comment below. I'm going to pick out two, three, or four, and we're going to read them. Make sure we're hitting that like button, subscribe button. If I didn't tell you, my name is Roddy. Thank you so much for coming back and watching another video. Look, I just want to start out by saying this. Another season has come and gone, and you guys continue to watch. I think this time last year, I had to have like 3,000 subscribers, maybe. I don't know if there's a way to be able to figure that out, but we are now at like 11,200. That's absolutely insane. This is technically my first season full-time making videos consistently. Last year was, you know, on and off. You guys have been pushing this channel out there, telling your friends, sharing it, subscribing, joining the Patreon, joining the Discord. All of that's linked in the description below. I just wanted to say thank you so much for continuing to watch. Seriously, it means the world to me, and I'm inching closer to be able to just doing this full-time. Another announcement I'd like to make before we get into the first topic. I've been doing Bleach Report live streams once a week after every game on Monday, or if we played on Monday, it'd be Tuesday. That's not happening anymore. I am now going live on Bleach Report two times a week in the offseason on Thursday and Friday for a half an hour each day up until next season, and then when the season starts, it's three days a week. That's right, they extended your boy. So, with all that being said, I could not have done that without you guys initially watching my stuff, them finding me, and me being able to sign an extended contract with them. Not exactly extended contract, but you know, we're not in the NFL here. We're not signing contracts. Mike Vrabel, signing the Jets contract. All that to say, I'm going to be live twice a week on Bleach Report. I believe it's 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific. Yeah, pretty exciting stuff. So, there will not be a Monday recap on Bleach Report. And by the way, those live streams on Bleach Report will show up the next day on YouTube, so don't worry your little heads about that. All that to say, thank you so much for pushing me to get to this moment. We are going to continue full speed ahead. We got a lot to talk about. There are chapters below on the timeline where you want to, you know, skip around and see different topics, but I think we need to discuss the most important thing. This game against the Chargers is this Antonio Pierce's last game. Does it matter if we win this game if we If I had to put money on it, I would say this is Antonio Pierce's last game. Now, the more I think about it, look, I am sad and it's not because, it's not just because I like Antonio Pierce or because like, oh, he's a Raider fan and I wanted to work and he was the interim and blah blah blah. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I don't think a lot of what went wrong this season was on him, although it still just doesn't feel right. There's something really off about the way he manages the games with or without all his starters out there. The starting Minshew over Aiden thing is going to be studied for the rest of human existence. It still makes zero sense to me and if he was pressured into doing it, he should have went right to the owner and said dude, we're gonna, this is gonna cost us games if I'm forced to listen to the offensive coordinator and the GM because he's got all this vibrato but then he coaches the game scared and he makes scared decisions personnel wise and somebody asked him in a recent press conference what did you learn about yourself this season and he said pretty quickly, go with my gut, believe in yourself. I don't know if I'm reading too much into it but that feels like he was thinking maybe I should have got rid of Getze sooner and I should have Now to be fair to AP, he tried to pull the trigger after five games. He's like we're going Aiden and then Aiden gets hurt. You can't control the injuries. I just want to make myself clear when I say that I think we need to move on from AP, it's not because I don't think that maybe if we stay the course we can get to a competitive spot in the division. It's just that in my personal opinion there are better coaching candidates out there and with that being said it's time folks to rank my top five potential head coaching candidates for the Las Vegas Raiders. It's a moment you've all been waiting for. We're going to go five to one because I want to keep it a little bit of suspense. Is it Rabel? Is it Ben Johnson? Is it a mystery candidate? Number five and just so you know I'm starting at five so this is my this is my fifth most favorite choice. This doesn't mean like I want this guy to be hired. If they hired him I'm gonna be like I don't know about this. There's not a lot of great head coaching options out there however there's a guy out there that's won a Super Bowl that's led his team to multiple. A little bit older but runs around like a 25 year old and his name is Pete Carroll. Guys he's out there. I don't know if but if we fire AP and we strike out on some higher candidates on my list here Pete Carroll is a proven commodity that will get you to win enough games to at least have a competitive and entertaining season. He was able to pull off one of the better trades in recent memory trading Russell Wilson gaining back assets and picks and Geno Smith and Geno Smith is better than Russell Wilson. Pete Carroll knows how to motivate guys how to push the right buttons. He's not my preferred choice. He's not in my top four my top three but he's definitely number five. Number four young up-and-coming offensive coordinator who squeezed every little bit of juice out of the post Tom Brady Tampa Bay Buccaneers and that is Liam Cohen. This guy wasn't on my radar before this past season but now with Baker Mayfield I think he's third in the league in touchdowns and this is after Chris Godwin got hurt out for the season. This is after they put in this rookie running back that nobody's ever heard of called Bucky Irving. Liam Cohen absolutely knows what he's doing on offense. The reason why he isn't ahead of these other guys is because he hasn't done it on the biggest stages. He's done it well in the regular season and in the playoffs they look okay but I've seen these other guys coach at a high level whether it's a position coach or a head coach more so than Liam Cohen has and it's risky to go offensive young mediocre media what is that word meteoric rise guru Liam Cohen when he isn't at the same level as these top two guys. The reason why I skipped three is because my third choice to be the head coach is Antonio Pierce. I have Pete Carroll, Liam Cohen and then I have my top two and then right in the middle is AP. I do think I don't like to throw the word deserve nobody deserves anything right I do think you can make a compelling case that any of the good stuff to happen this season is because of Antonio Pierce and any of the bad stuff is because of Gardner Minshew and Luke Getsy and the idea that we got a lot of people hurt and that even when the season's over this team plays hard as hell for him. You can't deny that so you can convince me that there is a world where Mark Davis and Telesco and Tom Brady go let's run it back one more season with AP and I would be disappointed at the idea of not getting these top two guys but I would not be completely upset if we brought him back and that is just me maybe preparing for the scenario in which they do do that but it's not all AP's fault. He wanted to hire Cliff Kingsbury. Cliff wanted a three-year deal but that was impossible because AP only has a two-year deal. That's not AP's fault. He wanted to trade up for Jayden Daniels. They tried to get it done. The commander said obviously not. That's not AP's fault. They wanted to draft Michael Penix. They thought Michael Penix would fall. There was an agreement between the Vikings and the Broncos and the Raiders. The Broncos would take Bowe. We'll take Penix. The Vikings would take McCarthy. Falcons trade up. All hell breaks loose. Vikings trade up. It's a nightmare. All that to say I do not think he'll be back next year but if he is I'm okay with it although my number two and one options are my number one and two options. Number two and I go back and forth on these two and you guys know who it is but number two right now I'm just going to say Ben Johnson at number two only because Vrabel has won a coach of the year award. He's shown that he can run an organization at a high level and maximize his offensive and defensive talent. If we hire Ben Johnson instead of Mike Vrabel I'll be going bananas. I'll be extremely happy. I guess I'll talk about them both right now. Mike Vrabel and Ben Johnson. If you get one of these guys in the interview room you cannot let them leave the building. I believe in my heart of hearts that Ben Johnson can be one of these next Shanahan, McVeigh, LaFleur type guys. We're going to be talking about the Ben Johnson coaching three when it's all said and done. However, just because I believe it doesn't mean it's guaranteed to have happened. Mike Vrabel has quite literally shown how good he can be as a head coach which is the only reason why I have him above Ben Johnson. But honestly it's one A and one B. Now people will say Mike Vrabel needs a good OC. Well he hired Matt LaFleur and Arthur Smith. They both got head coaching jobs. Then he struck out with Todd Downing. So he's two for three in finding those guys. I've already said Wes Welker and Josh McCown. Those are my two options. If Vrabel gets hired and he brings in Todd Downing, I'm going to be extremely upset. Although I don't foresee that happening. I don't think Mark Davis would let that happen. I do think these are the five options that are most likely for the Raiders. I don't know if they're going to look for an Aaron Glenn. I don't know if they're going to look at a Todd Munkin. John Gruden's name has been thrown out there. I just think that ship has sailed. I don't think he's a great evaluator of talent and I don't think he'd be willing to let Telesco make the draft picks. But these are my five options right now. Pete Carroll at five. Liam Cohen at four. AP at three. Ben Johnson at two. Mike Vrabel at one. Let me know your thoughts. I want to see your top fives. And I'll read them next week, a lot of them. Now look, Black Monday's coming up. Is there a world in which AP's just still the coach? I do think there's a chance. If I had to set the odds, if I had to set a percentage, I would say 35% chance he's the head coach. I would say, and I'm not trying to equate this 100%. I'm just giving chances. I would say it feels like 65% to 70% chance that Vrabel's the next head coach. Ben Johnson feels in the low 30s. Liam Cohen feels like he's in the low 30s. Pete Carroll feels a little bit more likely than Liam Cohen, in my humble opinion. Or even Ben Johnson. Seems like a Mark Davis higher. I just don't know if Pete Carroll would be interested in that job. But yeah, those are my top five head coaching candidates. We are going to get into Aiden O'Connor right now because there's an article on ESPN, Paul Gutierrez, that talks about his future with the team. Sorry, I'm just getting emotional. But before we do that, I need you guys to go to the link in the description below and check out my Patreon, patreon.com slash allaboardraiders. It is similar to a YouTube membership program where you get a bunch of different benefits. You get your name at the end of the credits to become an executive producer like these beautiful people right here. You get videos early, ad free. You get exclusive content never before seen on YouTube. You get updates from the channel. You get all that goodness for a small fee per month. You could sign up limited time. You could cancel whenever you want. You can gift memberships a la Twitch or YouTube to other people if you want. Link in the description below. We just hit 26 members. Let's get to 30 before February. That's all I wanted to plug. Aiden O'Connor's future. There's a lot that's been said about Aiden. It feels like Derek Carr 2.0 in terms of the fandom. I've had my take on it. I think that he's an extremely accurate and cerebral player. I think the growth from last year to this year is noticeable. I think he's proven a lot of people wrong by how mobile that he's being. Am I saying he's Michael Vick? No, obviously not, but when you say something nice about Aiden it turns into did you just say? No, I didn't just say. I said he's moving his feet better than he did last year and I do think he makes throws that backup quarterbacks do not make. Again, am I saying that he's the next so and so? I'm not, but to say he's a backup when we see what backups look like Gardner Minshew, Desmond Ritter, Mack Jones, any quarterback for the Giants, any quarterback for the Browns. These guys stink. Terrible. Aiden O'Connor can come in and win you games and I just think we lost out on a big opportunity here to see what he could have been this season because there's a lot of games that we would have won if he had started the whole season and I think people are starting to come around to the idea that maybe just maybe we could build around him. I'm not saying that that's going to be the case, but let's read this article that was posted 11 hours, I'm recording this on well it's going to be up the same day, doesn't matter. Is Aiden O'Connor upending the Raiders NFL draft plans? And again, like this is a question that we're asking now because he didn't start the whole season. If he started the whole season we would know. Anyway, Paul Gutierrez starts by saying Aiden O'Connor has seen this movie before. In fact, he starred in it. So forgive the second year quarterback if Deja Vu has him feeling a certain way as O'Connor on the Raiders 4-12 headed to the Sunday season finale against playoff bound Los Angeles 10-6 for playing the best football of the season. Especially with O'Connor's efficient play, essentially knocking the Raiders out of draft slots that would have allowed them to select the quarterback of their choosing without having to trade up. Last year O'Connor drew for eight touchdown passes without a single interception in the Raiders final four games. The Raiders went three and one in that stretch. And by the way, last year he beat the Broncos, he beat the Chargers, he beat the Chiefs. Now with the Raiders season, sorry, now with the Raiders riding a season-best two-game winning streak, wow, after they had dropped 10 straight, O'Connor has two touchdowns without a pick while completing 60 percent of his passes in those wins against Jacksonville and New Orleans. And here's what I'll say about that. People love, people who don't like Aiden, not don't like Aiden, but don't want to see him be our quarterback, go. He played against two really bad football teams really well. Are we just forgetting about the Chiefs game now? Are the Chiefs a bad football team? Do they have a bad defense? Is that an easy place to play in front of 40 million people on Black Friday? Are we just throwing that game out the window? But go off. Too little too late, says Paul Gutierrez. Unfortunately, we continue to talk about that skid, O'Connor said on Wednesday. It was not ideal, it's frustrating, but at the same time, you try to enjoy the wins. You have to, and then you realize, as I continue to say, how hard it is to win. You just move on after that win, celebrate it, and then go on to the next game and do it. Okay, plus it's the first time this season the Raiders have gone two straight games without turning the ball over, but we started a garden adventure. Okay, Raiders coach Antonio Pierce preached throughout the season training camp that we cannot turn the ball over. Yes, obviously, okay. Going 5-4 down the stretch last season, including 3-1 in the AFC West with O'Connor at the helm, not only helped Pierce get elevated from his interim coaching spot, it helped keep the Raiders at a prime position to draft the quarterback. Okay, so we know all this. Let's talk about what's going on this season. This is what AP said, okay, about Aidan O'Connor. He's just a resilient player. It's kind of like what we saw last year. The more reps he gets, the more opportunities he gets, he makes the most out of them. And like I said, whenever he protects the football, he puts us in a better position. As a rookie, O'Connor started 10 of 11 games, which he went 5-5. He passed for 2,218 yards, completed 60% of his passes, 12 touchdowns, 7 picks, passed rating of 84. Again, if Bryce Young had these numbers, we'd be taking our pants off. Okay, this season he has started 6 games. He's gone 2-4 while passing for 1,400 yards, 62% of his passes, won 6 touchdowns, 3 interceptions, passed rating of 85. That's without Devonta and Josh Jacobs. Hollywood would tell you that very few sequels are as good as the original, especially if the storylines are so simple, and yet Antonio Pierce was succinct when he asked if O'Connor had shown enough this season that he would be comfortable moving into next season with him as a starting quarterback. Pierce said, yeah, I think Aidan O'Connor will be a starting quarterback next season. If, sorry, it will be one of the more pressing issues for the Raiders this offseason. Do they move up in the draft to find that elusive franchise guy, or do they simply roll with O'Connor and build around him? O'Connor now has Las Vegas projected to have the 9th pick, and even if the Raiders minority owner Tom Brady, who is already well-established relations with Sanders, has a deuce in the organization, it will be expensive. This is a quote by O'Connor. Any game experience I can get is super valuable, so I'm just trying to take advantage of every rep, every situation, learn from them, success, failure, put them in the bank, and just try to grow. Here's my take on all this. Would I like to have Josh Allen? Yes. That dynamic franchise guy? Yes. And is Aidan that right now? Obviously not. I've said he's improved vastly. I was angry that he didn't start because I thought we would win more games with him, and I think that's pretty good. And the people who said that they were the same are starting to backtrack on that, and it's okay. We all make mistakes. I was wrong about Josh McDaniels. You guys are wrong about Gardner Minshew being better than Aidan. It is what it is. I do think his ceiling is like someone of a Jared Goff, and I think his floor is someone of a Trevor Simeon, and he might be somewhere in the middle of that. But I am telling you, last year with Devontae and Josh Jacobs, he went five and four, or five and five if you want to count the game that McDaniels coached with him. I guess I'll count it. Five and five. As a rookie fourth rounder, it was a not good offensive line. If you sign a T. Higgins and you draft a Gente, I feel another sneeze coming on. I keep fighting it off for you guys. The line is now solidified with Glaze and JPJ, and you have a Ben Johnson at the helmet of Rabel. I'm telling you right now, there is a chance you can win 10 or 11 games with this guy. If Aidan O'Connell was on a healthy San Francisco 49ers, Kyle Shanahan would take him and walk to 10 wins. I think that's pretty clear. He makes the right decisions. He does not turn the ball over. He did in the Bucks game. He had some really bad throws. He had one really bad interception. I do think he hurt his leg like on the first drive and then tried to gut it out and couldn't really throw the football. But if you want to say that I'm making excuses, okay. I'm making excuses even though I'm telling you exactly what happened. I'm just mentally preparing people watching this like I did last season before it ended to be ready for this guy to be under center again and for him to get a full 17 games. And if then he doesn't work out, you do whatever it takes to trade up for whoever is the quarterback next to him. Because if he's not as good as people say, we should be drafting pretty high. And I get you don't want to do another year of this, but this was supposed to be the year to find out what he has and it wasn't that for whatever reason. And if AP is to blame for that, then he should be fired. But I don't know how many rookie quarterbacks coming out would be able to go in the arrowhead and throw for 340 and two touchdowns, which smoothly transitions me into the Shador Sanders of it all. Because Pellicero has come out and said that there are teams in the NFL who do not have a first round grade on them. I think that's a little crazy. I think if we were drafting 20th somehow, if we traded back to 20, we would take him and that would be great value. Now I've said since day one, I would be okay drafting Shador. I'd be excited. He's not my number one quarterback coming out. To me, it's Drew Aller. Now I know he's not technically coming out. I just want to say this side note. There are reports that he might come out if they have a good run in the college football playoff. They're a game away from the Natty. I went to Penn State, so I'm obviously rooting for them. Everybody needs to be rooting for Penn State to get the national championship. Because if they get there, I think that means there's a serious chance that Drew Aller is coming out. And if he's coming out, I've heard from scouts that have their own channels that there's a chance that maybe he can go number one overall. Which means either one of these quarterbacks then falls to us or maybe he doesn't go number one, which means we can take him at eight. I think he has the biggest upside of anybody in this draft if he comes out. He will be the number one overall pick next year, him or Arch Manning. Shador Sanders will be my number two option. But after that, and even with him, I'm not really convinced. I think there's a chance I'd rather take Jackson Dart in the second round than Shador with the eighth pick. I'd rather go like best player available in the first round and then Dart in the second round than Shador in the first round at eight. But we'll see what happens with the combine. Because that's very important too. And we'll see how the interviews go. But Tom Brady has come out and said... I don't even know if I'm gonna be able to read this right. Tom Brady has come out and said... I don't know if he's come out and said, but people have been saying that Brady has all but said Shador Sanders is his guy. I want to find the quote right here. Okay. Multiple reports indicate that Raiders minority owner Tom Brady will have a say in the team's quarterback. So if the team does trade up for Shador, he'll likely have to sign off on it. And then this is Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports. From what I've been told about Brady's opinion of Sanders, which he has shared with a handful of NFL coaches and executives over the past 18 months, there's a great amount of respect for Sanders' focus on preparation, his ability to learn and adapt, his accuracy and determination in the pocket, and his toughness to take hits and be resilient. I've been told that Brady has also been impressed with Sanders, that Sanders has avoided the pitfalls of being thrust onto the center stage of college football's limelight after transitioning to Colorado to play for his father Deion. He's also stayed in school for four years and developed, which is something Brady has reportedly, repeatedly and publicly said he values in a young quarterback. Now look, if Tom Brady, the greatest quarterback player of all time, is saying this and says we should draft him, trade up for Shador and draft him, then you know what, who am I to say that he's wrong? If that's really what Brady believes, then we're fine. Ow, then we're fine. If he falls to us, let's take him. If we have to trade up, let's go get him. From what I've seen, I prefer Drew Allard, but if he's not coming out, I'm all in on Shador. I don't really love what I see out of Cam Ward. Jalen Miller's a second-round prospect. Jackson Dart's a second-round prospect. Keep Aiden, get a veteran in there to teach Aiden Shador. If Shador stinks, we have Aiden that we can put in there. If we don't draft Shador, we go best player available, then we build around Aiden. But I do think that's the way to go moving forward. And I trust Tom Brady. There's no reason not to trust his opinion of these quarterbacks. We'll see if he's a good evaluator of talent, but as of right now, we don't have anything to go off of other than Gronkowski saying that he's the best talent evaluator he's ever seen. So only time will tell if Brady's good at this job. I'm going to assume that he is, and trust the process with him and Tom Falesco. Okay, it's that time, folks. Viewer comments. If you want your comments read in the next podcast on YouTube, comment away. I'll be siphoning through, reading the ones that are most interesting to me, topics about this video specifically. Kalom, Kalom, Kalum, Kalum, 510. I'm sorry if I'm reading that incorrectly. I gave you a bunch of different options there. He said, I really want Ben Johnson, but I would absolutely love Rabel-Welker combination. Then either get Dart or build around Aiden O'Connell and see how the season goes. Not saying Aiden O'Connell is our savior, but we still haven't put him in a position to know what we can do. Dart is better than Ward or Sanders. Jackson Dart had a really good showing in his bowl game. He's a decent athlete. I've seen him compared to Bo Nix and Carson Wentz. If you told me Bo Nix was going to be this good, I would have laughed at you, but I think the success of Aiden or Dart is contingent on the coach. So if we go Ben Johnson, I would love to go best player available and build around Aiden or Dart. If we go Rabel, maybe should go Sanders as the guy. Dwayne Thomas, 7984 says, somehow you don't think Pierce should have another year, but you praise the Lions head coach. He went 3-13 in his first year. AP messed up a ton, but he didn't pick Minshew. Telesco did. I'm more sure that he would have chosen Aiden over him, but it boiled down to Minshew's contract. Potentially, Dwayne, I'm not saying that you're not onto something there. I will say the main difference between Dan Campbell and AP is that we've seen AP win a lot of games with a roster similar to this, and then we just transitioned to next year, and it got worse. Dan Campbell started bad with a bad roster and built upon that, right? It's not like Dan Campbell came in and had a lot of success and then took that roster and tried to build upon it, and then it got worse, right? I think that's the difference between AP and Dan Campbell. However, I have AP ranked third of the five people that I would like to see coach a team next year. Thank you for the comment. Solomon Mitchell says, Rodney, there's no way on God's green earth that the Vikings are going to let Sam Darnold go after this season. I see them trading KJ and McCarthy. That's the last thing I wanted to touch on here. Oh, I would love Sam Darnold. And maybe they really screw up, or maybe they think that JJ's the guy and they just got to get rid of Sam. I don't think that's going to happen. I think they're going to franchise him or he's going to sign a long-term extension there, which is unfortunate. I wanted to touch upon JJ and McCarthy for one quick hot second here. I would not try to personal pick for him. Apparently, he's a very cerebral mind. It's just hard for me to wrap my head around the six quarterbacks that were drafted this year all being good, because I think Michael Pennings is going to be good. Somebody has to be bad, right? That's not great logic for me to say I don't want to trade for him, but it's just he didn't do much in high school or in college. He just didn't throw the ball. He went 10 for 18 for 150 yards in the National Championship. He's a first round talent. I just don't know. And then one preseason game, he gets hurt because he gets hit once. I wouldn't try to first round pick for him, but if we did, it'd be interesting. I don't know. Maybe bring in Josh McCown to pair with JJ McCarthy. Interesting. What are your thoughts on all that? All that to say, thank you so much for watching another episode of whatever this is. I don't really have a name for it. Thank you for coming back and watching another video. Comment away. Black Monday is coming in a few days. I'm going to be making videos. Whether or not AP gets fired, I think it's going to happen. Unfortunately so, but that means that we have a chance to get Brayboy Ben Johnson.