INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — The Las Vegas Raiders trailed by six points with just over seven minutes to play when their offense faced fourth and 1 on the Los Angeles Chargers’ side of midfield.
Got to go for it, right?
Coach Antonio Pierce didn’t think so, and it might have cost him the Raiders’ season opener.
After a brief but intense sideline discussion, Pierce sent punter A.J. Cole onto the field at the Chargers 43. Displeasure and confusion rumbled through SoFi Stadium, with a low thundering of boos emanating from the crowd in a metropolitan area where the Raiders are still a home team.
With the game likely on the line, Pierce and his Raiders didn’t try to seize it.
The Chargers did it instead, responding to the punt with a 92-yard touchdown drive for the final points in a 22-10 victory Sunday.
After his first game since getting the Raiders’ top job permanently on the strength of a 5-4 run as the interim coach last season, Pierce defended his decision to go against the NFL’s modern conventional wisdom and most of his fans’ ardent wishes at a key moment.
Pierce repeatedly said he felt Las Vegas’ defense should have been able to get the ball back in time for a winning touchdown drive.
“I mean, we got what we wanted,” Pierce said. “We got them backed up. We’ve got three timeouts there. Play good football, get the ball back (at) midfield, hopefully. But they broke off a long run, and that was the end of it.”
No NFL team had punted on fourth-and-1 inside its opponent’s territory while trailing by one score in the fourth quarter since 2016, according to Sportradar.
“We considered going for it,” Pierce said. “It was a long 1 (yard for a first down). We got stopped earlier in the game. Momentum. The punter had done a good job pinning those guys back. I think he had two or three punts inside the 20. Again, defense was the strength for the most part of the game.”
Indeed, the Raiders’ defense was largely outstanding for the first three quarters against Justin Herbert and the Chargers, allowing just 212 yards and no touchdowns.
Las Vegas’ offense also got stopped near midfield on fourth and 1 in the first quarter, and that was just one low point in a fairly unimpressive opener. In his Raiders debut, Gardner Minshew passed for 256 yards with one touchdown, one late interception and one comical lost fumble recovered by Khalil Mack shortly before halftime.
The Raiders’ 10 points were their fewest in a season opener since 2006.
“That’s Coach’s decision,” Minshew said of the key fourth down. “But I think anybody that’s a ballplayer wants the ball in their hands with the opportunity to help the team.”
Receiver Davante Adams, who had five catches on six targets for 59 yards, also declined to weigh in.
“I mean, my job is to run routes and do what’s called,” the six-time Pro Bowl selection said. “I don’t really want to get into that.”
Pierce’s decision was highly debatable, but it wasn’t completely indefensible in theory.
Some of the NFL’s top coaches in recent years have also been among the most conservative. The Rams’ Sean McVay and the 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan both have well-earned reputations as being more risk-averse than their counterparts despite being two of the top coaches in the game, while Bill Belichick was particularly cautious later in his career.
But Pierce ranked last in the NFL last season on the Aggressiveness Index, a metric put together by Football Outsiders to measure coaches’ eagerness to go for it on fourth down.
Pierce’s playing career ended in 2009, and he didn’t return to the NFL until 2022 as the Raiders’ linebackers coach. The professional game evolved during his absence, with the importance of being aggressive on fourth downs largely becoming conventional wisdom. Pierce knows it in theory, but putting it into practice as a head coach could still take time.
At least one major football mind saw the logic in Pierce’s decision: Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh.
“I wasn’t surprised or anything,” Harbaugh said. “I mean, the stop we got early in the game played into that. Their punter was doing a good job punting us down in there. I’m sure they felt our offense wasn’t moving the ball. We had a lot of three-and-outs in this game.”
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