There are a lot of questionable coaching decisions in the NFL every week, and one of the most notable ones from Sunday came from Las Vegas Raiders coach Antonio Pierce.
With just over seven minutes left to play during the the fourth quarter of the Raiders game against the Chargers, Pierce called for a punt on fourth-and-1 even though his team was trailing (16-10), and even though his team had the ball IN CHARGERS TERRITORY. The Raiders were at the Los Angeles 43-yard line when Pierce made the decision to punt. Raiders punter A.J. Cole ended up getting off a 35-yard punt that gave the Chargers the ball at their own 8-yard line.
The Raiders coach said he made the decision because he wanted to pin the Chargers back.
"I mean, we got what we wanted," Pierce said, via the Associate Press. "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."
The thing that made Pierce's decision even more bizarre is that the Raiders HAD gone for it on a fourth-and-1 play in the first quarter that came from their OWN 41. The Raiders ended up getting stopped on that play, which might have impacted Pierce's decision-making on the second fourth-down call.
Raiders quarterback Gardner Minshew didn't directly question his coach's decision, but he did make it pretty clear that he would have preferred to have gone for it.
"That's Coach's decision," Minshew said of the call. "But I think anybody that's a ballplayer wants the ball in their hands with the opportunity to help the team."
Although Minshew didn't put up huge numbers -- he threw for 257 yards and a touchdown -- he did look somewhat impressive in the second half in the lead up to the fourth-and-1 decision. On the Raiders' first five possessions of the second half, including the fourth-and-1 possession, Minshew went 10 of 12 for 91 yards.
Davante Adams was also asked about the call and he did his best to sidestep the question.
"I mean, my job is to run routes and do what's called," Adams said. "I don't really get into that."
Pierce did say that he had thought about going for it.
"It was a long one [yard]," Pierce. said. "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."
Although defense was definitely a strength for the Raiders on Sunday, Pierce must not have been paying closing attention in the second half. The Chargers had four offensive possessions in the half before Pierce made his decision to punt on fourth down, and two of those drives went for 60 yards or more (both of those drives ended with points). Basically, the Chargers had started to move the ball, so there was no reason to think that the Raiders were going to be able to shut them down and they didn't.
After the punt, the Chargers ended up driving 92 yards for a game-clinching touchdown. If the Raiders had gone for it, they could have potentially scored a touchdown to take the lead, but even a field goal would have been good since it would have cut the Chargers lead down to three points.
Pierce's decision marked the first time in eight years that an NFL coach called for a punt on a fourth-and-1 in an opponent's territory in the fourth quarter of a game where his team was trailing. The last time it happened came in Week 1 of the 2016 season when Rex Ryan was coaching the Bills against the Ravens. The big difference in those two games, though, is that Ryan's team was only trailing by a field goal while the Raiders needed a touchdown (Both teams ended up losing).
The game on Sunday marked Pierce's first one in Las Vegas without the "interim" coaching tag, and right now, it appears that he's no longer making the bold decisions that helped him get the permanent job.
