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Can you believe it’s been just over a week since the Raiders season ended? It seems like a lot longer than that considering how much discussion there has been about the direction of the team moving forward. But, yes, this time last week we were …
Can you believe it’s been just over a week since the Raiders season ended? It seems like a lot longer than that considering how much discussion there has been about the direction of the team moving forward.
But, yes, this time last week we were detailing the Ballers & Busters from the season finale. And that means it’s officially time to round up the season’s Ballers and the season’s Busters for the final account.
As the name goes, we begin with the Ballers.
It’s the week for All Pro teams. But while those teams compare players across the league to each other, around these parts we tend to focus on just the Raiders. Which brings us to our 2023 Raiders season awards.
It’s the week for All Pro teams. But while those teams compare players across the league to each other, around these parts we tend to focus on just the Raiders. Which brings us to our 2023 Raiders season awards.
No more striking example of Antonio Pierce impact on Raiders than Malcolm Koonce emergence
Two months ago Malcolm Koonce was not in a great place. The former third round pick was entering the latter half of his third NFL season seemingly going nowhere fast. Spinning his wheels.
Over 25 games — a season and a half — with Josh McDaniels as head coach, Koonce had not notched a single sack. He looked closer to being on the roster bubble than the starting lineup.
That all changed in an instant when Antonio Pierce took over as head coach. The first game under Pierce, Koonce has a career game, not only notching his first sack since 2021, but adding a career-best four tackles. And he did this without seeing his snap count go up from the first eight games of the season.
This wasn’t a one-off either. Each week it was another career best for Koonce. The following week he had another sack, a career-best two QB hits, and his first every forced fumble.
Five games into the AP era, Koonce had already matched or surpassed his entire career totals in sacks (2.0) and QB hits (six). Again, while not seeing his snaps counts jump up from earlier in the season.
Koonce would add six more sacks (!) over the final four games to finish with eight sacks — all in the nine games under Pierce as head coach — while adding 14 QB hits and three forced fumbles.
I asked Koonce whether Pierce had anything to do with his sudden development.
“He definitely had something to do with it,” Koonce said of Pierce. “The whole atmosphere of practice changed, the overall be yourself and just play how you play.”
“It definitely is a whole different vibe. It feels way more enjoyable to be here. Kind of don’t want to leave the locker room.”
Several Raiders players have talked about how much Pierce allowing them to be themselves on the field helped them to play better and made the game more fun. For Koonce it was a boost of confidence that did the trick.
“I’m definitely more confident now. Not thinking so much,” Koonce continued. “My first two years, every play I was hyper focused on everything. I think that’s what messed me up.”
This is a stark contrast to Josh McDaniels who was seen at practice ripping into Koonce for daring to get near the quarterback on a rollout. Kinda hard to be your best when your success is admonished rather than praised.
In many cases, players just respond better to certain coaches. And you could say that for this instance, but Koonce isn’t an isolated situation. Several other players on the Raiders have had similar experiences.
Let’s take three players in particular — Koonce, Maxx Crosby, and Jack Jones. Three players who are all in very different places in their careers and their development.
Crosby is an established veteran who has succeeded under four different coaches in his five seasons with the Raiders. Even still, he put up 9.5 of his 14.5 sacks this seasons in the final nine games under Pierce.
Jones is a clearly talented player just joined the Raiders midseason after being cut by the Patriots in just his second season for alleged attitude problems. He had two pick-sixes and four pass breakups in the last five games.
And Koonce was struggling to develop over his first 2.5 seasons in the NFL only to breakout in a big way over the last nine games.
All three are saying the same thing, with Crosby being the most vocal, because, well, he’s a vocal guy, but also because he’s the star of this team and he’s earned it.
For Jones it’s clearly about Pierce’s ability to channel his attitude to the playing field. Which is vintage Raiders to take players who other teams have dumped for being ‘misfits’ or having ‘attitude problems’ and putting them in the right environment where they can thrive being themselves.
Koonce is a soft spoken guy. Very different from Crosby and Jones or Antonio Pierce. And yet Koonce’s turnaround on the field perfectly encapsulates the overall impact Pierce had on this Raiders squad.
Pierce may or may not have his interim tag removed and take over as Raiders head coach. There are other strong candidates out there. But the effect Pierce has had on these players and this team is undeniable.
Ballers & Busters for Raiders Week 18 win over Broncos
For the fourth straight season, the Raiders complete the sweep of the Broncos. That’s right, the Las Vegas Raiders have never lost to the Broncos.
Antonio Pierce achieving goal of getting Maxx Crosby energy out of Raiders defense
Any coach would tell you he’d like to take the kind of energy Maxx Crosby has every day, bottle it, and sell it. It’s a nice thought, but just a fantasy, right? A coach couldn’t *really* do that, right? Don’t tell that to Antonio Pierce. That’s what he stated as his goal from day one as Raiders interim head coach.
“What I’d like to see those guys keep doing, and Patrick Graham, let loose. Put your ears back, let the dogs loose,” Pierce said at his introductory press conference back on November 1. “When the Raiders are rolling on defense, you guys see it. It comes through the TV. Maxx Crosby’s energy, I’m trying to match his today. I’ve got to match that for the next 10 to 12 weeks.”
The phrase ‘easier said than done’ comes to mind. After all, if it could be done, you’d think one of the Raiders coaches would have tapped into it at some point over the past five seasons since Crosby joined the team.
As seemingly unlikely as it may have seemed, from all indications, he’s done it.
The Raiders defense is playing on another level. Everything he’s done to get them to step up has worked. They have been the best defense in the NFL over his seven weeks as head coach, holding opponents to a league-low 15.28 points per game.
They’re opportunistic too. Pierce took over a team dead last in turnover differential (-8) with just eight takeaways in their first eight games. They’ve had 13 takeaways in the seven games since and have jumped up to 21st in the league in turnover differential (-3).
This included four defensive touchdowns over the past two weeks. One in a blowout of the Chargers and the other in a big upset win in Kansas City over the defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs.
While Pierce is not ready to call them ‘great’, he is seeing his lofty original goal coming to fruition.
“I think you’ve seen our defense match Maxx’s energy and effort and now production, and you’re seeing that,” Pierce said Friday. “At first it was Robert Spillane, okay, now it’s a couple other guys. Now you’re seeing 11 bad boys hunting each and every play. Now it’s a race to the ball, right? I call it roll calling the ball, get 11 hats to the ball, everybody get in the family picture. So, for me it’s very satisfying to see them buy into that of what we talked about the effort and matching your best players. Maxx’s job is to bring all those guys along and keep striving to stay in front, that’s what we want. And when we get that, you get the product that you got on the field.”
It may go without saying that you can’t simply ask and receive Maxx Crosby kind of energy from a player. That player has to be capable of it. As Pierce noted, he saw Spillane step up to try and match that energy all season. But several others have joined the party now as well.
The first was Amik Robertson, who had an interception, a forced fumble, and two pass breakups in Pierce’s first game since taking over as head coach. And it helped the Raiders score over 20 points for the first time this season.
The pass rush certain helped as well with a total of eight sacks. It was, of course, led by Crosby’s three sacks, but also included Malcom Koonce’s first sack of the season. All leading to the team being able to spark up all the cigars Crosby bought after the game.
No one has come up more of late than Crosby’s complement on the opposite end of the defensive line, Malcolm Koonce.
Koonce has put up seven sacks this season — all of which coming over the past seven games. And over the past two big wins, he has five sacks, two of which were the strip variety. One of those forced fumbles was returned for a touchdown by DT John Jenkins.
That was one of four defensive touchdowns the Raiders have had over the past two weeks. That included a Bilal Nichols scoop and score off a fumble and two pick sixes by Jack Jones.
Jones is well known for having been coached by Pierce in high school at Long Beach Poly and college at Arizona State. Clearly, the two are a good fit together as coach and player.
Crosby has been lobbying for Pierce to return as head coach after this season. The fifth year edge rusher has backed that up with his play. And the defense has been setting about to back him up in that endeavor.
Ballers & Busters for Raiders Week 16 win over Chiefs
A month ago the Chiefs boat raced the Raiders in Las Vegas to go 8-3 on the season take a commanding lead in the AFC Playoff race. At that time, it seemed you could chalk up another win for the Chiefs when the Raiders came to Arrowhead on Christmas Day.
Since then things have taken a turn for both teams. The Chiefs have been very beatable and the Raiders defense has been extremely stingy and opportunistic.
These teams collided on that same trajectory and the result was a stunner with the Raiders defense almost singlehandedly taking down Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs 20-14.
Malcolm Koonce first ever to sack Patrick Mahomes 3 times in game
Patrick Mahomes has been the best quarterback in football for several years. And he has two rings to show for it. One of his best attributes is his elusiveness. He is hard to get ahold of with his ability to move around along with his speed and mobility.
For that reason it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that no single player had ever had three sacks on him in a single game.
Until today.
Malcolm Koonce chased down Mahomes three times in the Raiders’ upset win over the Chiefs Christmas Day to become the first ever to do it.
#Raiders Malcolm Koonce is 1st player ever to sack Patrick Mahomes 3+ times in a game. Previous high was 2.5 for Miami's Jerome Baker in 2020
— Josh Dubow (@JoshDubowAP) December 25, 2023
While this performance may come out of nowhere for most people, it’s been building to this all season for Koonce.
“Malcolm is really making a name for himself,” said Antonio Pierce after the game. “This is now three weeks in a row he’s been like ‘Wow!’ It’s good to see the effort. Fighting through a lot of stuff.”
Not only has Koonce strung together three solid weeks in a row, his three sacks in this game give him seven over the past seven games.
It’s certainly not a coincidence that Pierce took over as head coach seven weeks ago.
Koonce and Maxx Crosby have formed the kind of duo the Raiders had hoped they would get from Tyree Wilson when they spent their pick at 7th overall in this year’s draft on him.
“We talk about it each and every week,” Pierce added. “We got 98 on the left and if somebody shows up on the right or in the middle, that’s going to be a problem. It’s starting to become a problem.”
Koonce is in his third NFL season. He had just two sacks total over his first two seasons.
Ballers & Busters for Raiders Week 14 route of Chargers
What an insane game this was. Four days earlier, the Raiders were shut out 3-0 by the Vikings. Then they come out in this one and not only score a touchdown on their opening drive, not only score 21 points in the first quarter, not only go up 42-0 in the first half, not only scored 49 points before the Chargers scored for the first time, but scored a franchise record 63 points in a 63-21 trouncing of the Chargers.
That was one heck of a run-on sentence.
So, you might just see a heavy dose of Ballers this week. I wasn’t even sure there’d be a Buster, but in the end I found one. But just one.
Ballers & Busters for Raiders Week 14 loss to Vikings
A barn burner it was not. This game made the wrong kind of history. It was the first game in Raiders history that was scoreless in the fourth quarter. In fact, the first score didn’t happen until 1:57 left in the game. That was a Vikings field goal and it proved to be the game winner.
Both teams had moved into scoring range earlier in the game, but the Vikings missed a field goal attempt and the Raiders fumbled it away inside the 20.
The result was a 0-0 tie for the first 58 minutes and a final of 3-0.
The Vikings offense is struggling and they will need to perform well to beat the Raiders on Sunday
After having a bye week to lick their wounds from the two previous defeats, the Minnesota Vikings are back in action, this time on the road. Minnesota takes on the Las Vegas Raiders in Allegiant Stadium at 3:05 p.m. CST.
The Vikings offense struggled mightily in their two losses just before the bye week. In weeks 11 and 12, the Vikings’ offense was tied for 29th in EPA/play with the Cleveland Browns and in front of only the Carolina Panthers and the New York Jets.
Since cutting bait with Josh McDaniels and that regime, the Raiders’ defense has come alive.
Minnesota is still firmly in the playoff picture as they currently hold the second wild-card spot and the sixth seed in the playoffs. But those two losses to the Denver Broncos and Chicago Bears may loom large as these were chances to distance themselves from the pack.
Instead, they are fighting off three teams with the same 6-6 record as they hold, including the Green Bay Packers, for a shot at the playoffs. Every game matters and the Vikings need to capitalize on each game.
If the Vikings want to get back to their winning ways against the Raiders, the offense has to look a lot better than it did before the bye. To do that, they will need to follow these four keys to victory.
