Las Vegas Raiders head coach Antonio Pierce liked what he saw from his team during an unfortunate situation
You hate that unfortunate situations have to happen, but you love to see the Las Vegas Raiders step up. That's exactly what happened with one particular situation on Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs, even though the silver and black still lost. The Raiders' injuries this year have been awful, but they cannot control them […]
You hate that unfortunate situations have to happen, but you love to see the Las Vegas Raiders step up. That's exactly what happened with one particular situation on Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs, even though the silver and black still lost.
The Raiders' injuries this year have been awful, but they cannot control them in the slightest. But when it happens to your best players like it has the Raiders or some of their most key players I should say, it hurts and it's hard to recover. But, when a situation happened during their game against the Chiefs, the team responded well.
More specifically, one of their rookies responded well.
Veteran and starting center Andre James went down with an injury, and rookie offensive guard Jackson Powers-Johnson filled in at the position for him. It went great, to say the least.
"Yeah, [Andre] James won't practice today. We'll see how it goes the rest of the week. And I really thought for Jackson [Powers-Johnson], going from left guard to center, zero reps probably since OTAs maybe. I can't think if he got any reps in training camp. No, he didn't. So, I thought that was a really good job by him," head coach Antonio Pierce said on Wednesday.
"We had no snap issues. I just want to go in there and make the MIKE calls and just the communication. And we know Jackson is a smart individual, obviously. And I thought the coaches did a good job getting him prepared in that situation, which was obviously during the middle of the game."
JPJ has been at guard all season so far, largely because the team gave James a contract extension at center this offseason. With JPJ's versatility, the Raiders liked what they saw from him in college at both positions, so they kept him at guard.
But, he's a natural center. He did great on Sunday in that role, especially when you factor in that the team really needed him. JPJ is a star in the making. Next, he will take on the Cincinnati Bengals and their great defensive line, along with the Denver Broncos again, the Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and others.
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