Las Vegas Raiders head coach Antonio Pierce just told on himself regarding a roster mistake he made a long time ago
Antonio Pierce and the Las Vegas Raiders made a big roster mistake earlier this year, and now it's showing very loudly. The Raiders have struggled in the run game all year long. Let me rephrase that — they have been one of the worst rushing teams in football all year, if not the worst. The […]
Antonio Pierce and the Las Vegas Raiders made a big roster mistake earlier this year, and now it's showing very loudly.
The Raiders have struggled in the run game all year long. Let me rephrase that — they have been one of the worst rushing teams in football all year, if not the worst. The last few weeks have been better, with decent games against the Kansas City Chiefs and the Denver Broncos, making you wonder what they have done differently.
When the season kicked off, the first few games went by and the fan base was calling for Zamir White to be benched and Alexander Mattison to be the starter. And, for the beginning of the season, Mattison was the best running back. He was finding the end zone and catching passes at a great clip. But, what never got brought up by the fans or even the coaches, was that they had a guy on the practice squad, who had been there the last few years, who's pretty good.
That is, of course, Sincere McCormick, who played lights out last game with a 5.9 yards per carry. And this was a surprise, to everyone but Antonio Pierce.
"What you're seeing on gamedays, on Sundays, and Friday from last week is what we saw every day in practice – a guy that ran hard, runs tough, good vision, decisive, hits the hole," Pierce said. "The first guy is not tackling him right now, and that's been a big key for us in the run game, not getting tackled by that first defender. So, he's making the most of his opportunity. He'll keep getting opportunities. I said that last week. I think it was 12 carries he got, and hopefully we can just bump that up a little bit more this week."
So what it sounds like he is saying is that he always saw these traits from him in practice, and never decided to give him a shot until Week 12. Why is that? If he's looking amazing in practice, and your run game is rock bottom, why not try that out earlier? We could be having a completely different conversation about the run game right now.
That's a roster error on himself that he just admitted he made. If he's been seeing it, he's known that this guy was going to do this in the game. And yet, he's been sitting on the practice squad, it just doesn't make much sense.
McCormick should get the bulk of the carries next week. If he does, I wouldn't be surprised to see him have a decent game again but this time against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. After this game on Sunday, the Raiders will be on primetime against the Atlanta Falcons.
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