The Las Vegas Raiders were an utter failure under the leadership of Antonio Pierce when he took over as the head coach. Despite having the pulse of the team and the fan base, he was ousted after just one year, in which the team suffered a 10-game losing streak en route to just four wins.
This offseason, Pierce has been seemingly trying to get under the skin of Raider Nation in any way possible. Whether he showed up to Kansas City Chiefs practice decked out in team gear, sent an awkward message before Week 1 or publicly blamed Tom Telesco for his failures, it has been a lot.
Pierce, however, just crossed the line like never before. Making cameos at rival training camps or bizarre, petty remarks on NFL Today is one thing, but his latest comments about minority owner Tom Brady may actually put the team in some hot water.
Antonio Pierce just crossed the line with latest Tom Brady comments
As Raiders fans are surely aware, Brady is both the minority owner and an NFL announcer for FOX Sports. The NFL has a full set of special rules in place to prevent any conflict of interest, no matter how often it is brought up and used to slam the Raiders.
However, Pierce went on SiriusXM Mad Dog Radio and was asked about Brady's involvement in both the Raiders' organization as well as production meetings for other NFL teams. According to Pro Football Talk, Pierce had this to say:
"This is unprecedented, what we’re seeing. I think I would be uncomfortable if it was the other way around, to be honest with you," Pierce said. "Because you’re not dealing with just a normal person. Tom Brady is the elite of the elite, one of the greatest quarterbacks, one of the greatest players in the game. [I] played against him, obviously, [he's a] student of the game."
While this just sounds like a mere compliment of the legendary player, what Pierce said next was a direct ploy to get the Raiders in trouble.
"It’s not hard for him to watch a few things on a Friday practice or hear things in a production meeting and be like, ‘Hmm,’ and have tidbits," Pierce said. "And you’d be foolish enough to think that he’s not gonna share that with the Raiders because we had those conversations about certain things."
Brady's exact agreement with the NFL and his list of dos and don'ts are a bit murky. But if he was actually sharing privileged information that he learned at the opposing team's practices with Pierce last season, when he was the coach in Las Vegas, that is a direct conflict of interest.
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Another interesting component of this is that if Pierce is indeed telling the truth, then he is admitting to being complicit in what might be cheating, or at least a conflict of interest. That is not a good look for him either, even though he is intending to just make Brady look bad.
The irony in all of this is that Pierce, with his supposed additional information, was still unable to win more than four games with the Silver and Black in 2024. In fact, the Raiders lost eight straight games directly after Brady was welcomed into the building.
It would also be a shock to learn that NFL teams are tipping their hand and revealing their darkest secrets or intricacies of the game plan during production meetings, especially to someone like Brady, who has a nefarious history of following the rules.
It would not be a surprise to see the NFL investigate a comment like this, and depending on what they find, it could be bad news for Las Vegas. Hopefully, though, this ends up being exactly what it looks like, which is a smear campaign from Pierce after being canned by Brady and Co., and being unable to land even a coordinator job in the NFL this season.