Antonio Pierce in his element for Raiders’ Southern California training camp

COSTA MESA, Calif. — A smile stretched across Antonio Pierce’s face as soon as the wheels on the plane carrying him touched the ground in Orange County earlier this week.

It seems like the grin hasn’t left ever since. The Raiders’ coach said “it’s all peaches and cream” when it comes to heading his first training camp 28 miles from his hometown of Paramount, Calif.

“It felt so good to be home,” Pierce said. “I’m excited, excited for our players to be here. We have a nice opportunity to enjoy some weather nice weather and get away for a little bit.”

So much has changed from Pierce’s first two training camps with the Raiders the last two years, and yet, a few things remain the same. The 45-year-old previously best known as a Super Bowl-winning and Pro Bowl linebacker with the New York Giants never could have expected to be in this position so quickly without having ever as much served as an NFL coordinator.

But he created a kinship with his players immediately upon taking his first job on an NFL staff in 2022 as the Raiders linebackers coach on Josh McDaniels’ staff. Much of the roster, especially those on defense, gravitated toward Pierce after he came to Las Vegas following four years as a defensive assistant at Arizona State University.

Players like linebacker Robert Spillane were motivated to play for Pierce, and that desire hasn’t worn off despite his promotion. If anything, the Raiders are now more fiercely loyal to Pierce and attuned to any perceived slight.

Cornerback Jack Jones, a longtime Pierce acolyte, saw a CBS Sports list ranking his coach as the 28^th best in the league and couldn’t help but bring it up after the second training camp practice.

“I couldn’t even put into words what he means to me,” Jones said of Pierce. “To put him the 28^th coach, I feel like they were disrespecting him. Me, the team, him, I don’t like that. That set a fire under me. We’re going to show everybody.”

Sounds like classic Pierce.

Not that the coach would necessarily be offended by the ranking, but that he would use any opportunity to light a motivational fire under his players.

Pierce proclaimed that the Raiders were going to play harder and reestablish their identity when he took over for McDaniels midway through last season, and that’s exactly what they did. They went from one of the worst teams in the NFL to one of the better ones, particularly on defense.

Las Vegas went 5-4 under Pierce, stayed in the playoff race until the penultimate week of the season and won three of its final four games.

A number of Raiders then lobbied for him to get the permanent job including most notably the team’s two best players, edge rusher Maxx Crosby and wide receiver Davante Adams.

“AP is the right coach for any team,” Adams said after this year's first training camp practice. “If you have a player’s coach the way he is, it’s real. He’s understanding. He’s very realistic but also upholds and maintains the standard of all he believes in and everything we all believe in. It’s real easy to follow a guy who understands the big picture and has the same mindset we have as players.”

Pierce’s No. 28 slot in the coaching list wasn’t meant to be disrespectful, and it’s likely in the same range no matter who’s judging. In fact, ESPN’s list that Jones must have missed put the Raiders at No. 29 in coaching.

But the low marks are more out of Pierce being an “unknown,” as the CBS column states, than a surefire bottom-tier coach.

It’s representative of the reality he’s facing as an interim moving up to the permanent gig, a promotion that hasn’t often panned out throughout NFL history.

Pierce is the 11th interim coach to have the tag shed for the next season in the last 25 years, and only four predecessors ever won a playoff game.

None made it further than the divisional round of the postseason.

The concern was widely cited three years ago when Raiders owner Mark Davis passed on the chance to hire then-interim coach Rich Bisaccia permanently, even though he had better results than Pierce with a 7-5 record and playoff berth.

But Pierce’s positives must have outweighed any historical red flags in Davis’ mind.

Now Pierce needs to validate that trust. It’s just not a task that he's going to let kill his vibe.

“I don’t feel any pressure at all and I know our players don’t,” Pierce said. “We don’t play that way. I’m not coaching that way. I’m not allowing our coaches to coach that way. We’re going to play the game the way I was taught to play it. That’s to have fun, be physical, enjoy doing it and do it with one another. Let the chips fall where they fall.”

Pierce wasn’t always this carefree and confident at the onset of training camps. He recalled being a mess going into his rookie season as an undrafted free agent out of the University of Arizona in 2001 with Washington.

“I was nervous, throwing up, scared,” he said. “I was carrying shoulder pads and helmets for all the vets. This is a little different. People hand me water now, people tell me which way to go … but being the head coach of the Raiders is special. Having my first training camp back in Los Angeles, Southern California area, is really special for me because it’s full circle.”

Pierce started his coaching career a decade ago at Long Beach Poly High School, 23 miles up the road from the Jack R. Hammett Sports Complex, which serves as the Raiders’ new temporary home.

Jones played under Pierce there, and last year mentioned how some of his strongest memories were how often the coach made the team run — even at halftime of games when they were underperforming.

Perhaps not coincidentally, for the first time in years, the Raiders ended their first practice of training camp with a series of sprints. The full-team runs weren’t disciplinary in nature, just apparently one last conditioning push before the players were then sent to the weight room.

Although Pierce has pledged to amp up practices compared to the last couple Raiders’ coaching staffs with at least some live tackling after pads come on next Tuesday, it’s not his focus. He wants his team to get something his teams never had as a player 15 to 20 years ago — restraint.

“Training camp back then was six weeks long, it was two-a-days, we were banging every day; it hurt,” Pierce said. “Now it’s a little different. Here, you can really gauge and control the tempo of your players and practice. There might be days where I say we’re going to have pads on and I don’t feel like it, so we’re not going to have pads on. You can control the narrative obviously as a head coach, and I’m going to do what’s best for the players.”

Pierce spearheaded the plan for the Raiders to start season preparations away from their Henderson headquarters for the first time since the franchise moved to Las Vegas in 2020. It should come as no surprise that they wound up in a location where he is most comfortable.

But that was more of a bonus than a deciding factor, according to Pierce. The plan was also a way to escape the desert heat that had the team practicing as early as 7 a.m. in past years, but most of all, Pierce sees it as a way to instill a mentality he preaches into his team.

“The key thing is, when you go to training camp and you go away, it’s the brotherhood,” Pierce said. “It’s us against the world. The good thing about it is we can’t have (many) fans here, so we’re going to have to entertain one another, and sometimes it’s a good thing. Training camp at home, you get to run to mom and dad and kids and a wife. Well, when they get to that hotel, it’s each other. It’s one another, and same thing for the coaches. I think it’s going to be really critical for our team to become the tightest unit possible.”

 

Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or