A rough start to the Raiders season could be hard to pull out of. Antonio Pierce has said several positions, including that of quarterback, will be dependent upon getting off to a good start to the season.
But what does that mean? And how do the Raiders plan to try and make that happen? Pierce discussed this prior to the team’s first practice for the season opener. And to that he had two primary ways they can make it possible.
1. Don’t beat yourself
This one is a multi-part thing. And it’s especially crucial because the Raiders play their first two games of this season on the road in Los Angeles and Baltimore.
“We’ve got to handle adversity,” said Pierce. “We talked about adjustments, that’s going to come up as well. Got to play penalty free there as well, can’t turn the ball over and good third-down and red-zone defense. All the things that we talked about and we worked on in this offseason and what we started with.”
2. Keep it simple
“Less is more,” he added. “Sometimes when you’re calling the game as a coordinator or as a head coach, you want to throw everything out there in Week One. And let’s be realistic, you’re still like in that training camp, preseason mode now, right? Because not a lot of reps are there. So, allow your players to play fast, don’t sit there and make it a thinking game. These gentlemen are physically the one percent of the one percent of the world. Don’t allow it to slow down mentally for them, because you’ve got all these great schemes and ideas. So, a lot of players to play fast, that’s going to be the key for us.”
The defense can probably handle a more complicated scheme than the offense at this point because they’re entering the third year in the same system under DC Patrick Graham.
The offense, on the other hand, has a new OC in Luke Getsy and a new QB in Gardner Minshew who through most of the offseason was running with the twos before swapping first team reps with Aidan O’Connell throughout camp and preseason.
A limited playbook early on isn’t a terrible thing. Getsy has called a lot of games in the past few years, but he has all new weapons to work with, making his approach somewhat hard to predict. And after a few games, when opposing teams can get some tape on it, he can throw in some new wrinkles.