Silver and black roots. What it means to be a Raider. Understanding “the Raider way”.
These are ties that suffocate. Another year, another head coach, all searching for the faded, yellowing images of what a franchise used to be and what it could be again. All of this sets the stage for the next chapter of the Los Angeles/Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders, whose biggest problem is not a head coach or a quarterback, but an owner who keeps Xeroxing his identity father, Al Davis, rather than meaningfully and patiently crafting one himself.
It’s an imitation game under Mark Davis that’s now five copies and bleached into nothingness – from Dennis Allen to Jack Del Rio, from Jon Gruden to Josh McDaniels, and now Pierce to the one Davis says brings his team together and its legacy of a golden age that has barely appeared since the turn of the century. That will make six head coaches that Davis has hired in the 13 years since he took over the franchise following the death of his father. All came espousing their own personal understanding of what it meant to be a Raider and promising to recapture a proud history that was slipping away with each passing year.
They arrived to try to restore The Raider Way. And off they go, with their results more often than not representing a Raider path that has been redefined in two decades of overwhelming familiarity — filled with mediocrity, broken promises and a bloated payroll of defunct coaching hires pushed into ether. A pattern of results under ownership that, to be fair, was not just the product of Mark Davis, but also an extension of Al’s later years. The story dates back to the firing of Art Shell after the 1994 season, which sparked an unfathomable streak of 15 head coaching hires in 31 years once Pierce’s replacement was named.
This is not a trend. It’s a wreck.
It continues today in search of a culture that does not exist – and has not existed consistently – since the mid-1990s. It is a creeping scourge not unlike landlordism. of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, who still lives dream memories of his teams from 30 years ago. This is facilitated by an owner, Mark Davis, whose wandering impatience from one coach and general manager to the next is no different from what made the team’s former owner, Dan Snyder, a resounding failure on the field with his Washington franchise. All punctuated by a sudden apathy from the quarterback, who was presented with significant resolve in the 2024 draft but curiously lacked the “Raider Way” aggressiveness to execute a plan.
Let me be clear: This is not a criticism of Pierce’s firing. It is a condemnation of the process that created this situation. Starting with Davis restarting the team under Pierce in 2023, after reuniting with Maxx Crosby, Davante Adams and Josh Jacobs – two of whom are no longer on the roster – then choosing a head coach who is now also party.
All of this set in motion a path to 2024 that cratered — starting with the inability to get a real answer at quarterback for Pierce, then ending with sending him to address the media a day before he found out he was fired. The situation was so delicate at team headquarters that, according to sources interviewed by Yahoo Sports, Pierce had already begun discussing possible changes to the coaching staff hours before learning he was losing his job.
The disjointed and embarrassing ending preceded a farewell paragraph:
The Las Vegas Raiders have fired Antonio Pierce as head coach. We appreciate Antonio’s leadership, first as interim head coach and last season as head coach. Antonio grew up a Raiders fan and his Silver and Black roots run deep. We are grateful for his ability to reignite what it means to be a Raider throughout the organization. We wish only the best for Antonio and his family in the future.
As expected, he paid homage to the culture built by Al Davis, with references to Pierce’s “silver and black roots” and his “ability to revive what it means to be a Raider.”
Pierce went 9-17 and won four games in 2024. From that perspective, he has indeed embodied what it means to be a Raider. Especially under Mark Davis, whose teams now boast a 91-137 regular season record since he took over the franchise in 2011. That’s a .397 winning percentage which, when compared to his peers who have a similar number of years as primary owner, is worse than everyone except Jimmy Haslam of the Cleveland Browns (.345) and Shad Khan of the Jacksonville Jaguars (.301).
Since Mark Davis took over, the Raider Way isn’t that different from the Jaguar Way or the Brown Way when it comes to actual results.
This is what happens when we cling to a borrowed identity rather than a created one. When one of your deciding factors when hiring your next head coach is whether he can recreate the culture of the past. You don’t hear the San Francisco 49ers constantly stressing about staying true to the offensive genius of how Bill Walsh built the 49ers in the 1980s. The Green Bay Packers aren’t obsessed with chasing coaches who preach the fundamental teachings of Vince Lombardi. There’s no emphasized and oft-spoken mantra about paying homage to something that should be celebrated every now and then on classic NFL Films reels, then turned off when the work of Today begin.
Are there any outliers to this? Certainly. The Pittsburgh Steelers have found a way to stay consistent with their decades-long brand of football. The same goes for the Baltimore Ravens. They regularly address the “Steelers brand of football” or “Ravens type player.” But there is a problem in these two organizations that eludes the Raiders. They hire good coaches and front office executives, then step aside and let them do their job.
Think for a moment: In the time the Raiders have hired 15 head coaches since 1995, the Steelers will have two and the Ravens will have done three. It turns out it’s much easier to maintain and grow a culture with roots when you let coaching staffs and front offices develop them.
Within the AFC West, other ownership groups have decided to establish this type of structure. It’s why the Kansas City Chiefs hired Andy Reid four days after he was fired by the Philadelphia Eagles in 2013. It’s why the Denver Broncos handed all the power of their football operations to Sean Payton. And that’s why the Los Angeles Chargers — not always considered the most forward-thinking ownership group in the NFL — sought out Jim Harbaugh as a culture builder last offseason, then left him all rearrange as he saw fit.
This is what the Raiders face in their own division. They are faced with groups of owners who are not only competent, but also willing and able to make quality hires, putting those hires entirely in control of their franchises, and then stepping aside to let the results do the talking. themselves. There is little evidence that Davis ever did this. And now fans are being led to believe that perhaps Tom Brady – who has never led an NFL franchise from ownership, never coached an NFL team and never spent a single day as a personnel manager or talent evaluator – could be the magic wand required to solve all the problems?
Mark Davis will continue to be the common denominator in all of this. The sooner he recognizes himself as the source of his own Silver and Black problem, the better chance he has of understanding “what it means to be a Raider” and writing his own unique chapter, rather than photocopying another page of decades of disappointment.
