NFL analyst has conspiracy theory about Raiders, Antonio Pierce situation | Sporting News

There is no way around it, the Las Vegas Raiders have had a disastrous season, with just about everything possible going wrong, from injuries to bad coaching decisions, to lackluster play on both sides of the ball.

There’s a lot of blame to go around for the struggles, whether it be on the players not performing at a high level, on general manager Tom Telesco for not putting together a good enough team, and/or on head coach Antonio and his staff for making some horrible decisions.

As a result of what we’ve seen this season, Pierce should most definitely be on the hot seat, and we wouldn’t have an issue with Telesco being in the same position, although he figures to be safer because of the successful draft he had in 2024.

If the Raiders do let Pierce go, former cornerback and current analyst, Richard Sherman, thinks it would be unfair. Sherman also went a step further, wondering aloud about the possibility that the Raiders set Pierce up to fail on purpose.

“They set him up for failure and if you fire him, it’s such BS” Sherman said on his podcast. “You didn’t give him a good enough team to do anything more than what they’re doing. They had the Kansas City Chiefs on the ropes, done for.

“But he’s had to do this with Gardner Minshew and Aidan O’Connell. These aren’t necessarily elite quarterbacks,” Sherman added. “You knew this wasn’t going to be an attractive job this last offseason, so did you just give it to Antonio Pierce so he can bite the bullet this season just to fire him until it was a more attractive position, and you have a higher draft pick and you can get a quarterback of the future?

“If they do that, I’d be so pissed off because that’s total BS. You set the man up for failure. Expected him to fail. Fired him for failing with no chance.”

Lest Sherman forget, this is pretty much the same exact team Pierce went 5-4 with down the stretch of last season. Pierce also abandoned the quarterback that helped him tally that record, Aidan O’Connell, in favor of Gardner Minshew, who was a disaster after being named the starter over O’Connell.

You can point to injuries or the fact that Telesco didn’t do enough at quarterback, but that doesn’t erase the fact that Pierce and his staff have made several terrible decisions to set this team back further, which is extremely troublesome.

Furthermore, Pierce has routinely brought unnecessary negative attention to the team on multiple occasions, with his “business decisions” comment and publicly expressing frustration with offensive play-calling being two examples.

There would be nothing wrong if Las Vegas moves on from him in 2025. And, to be clear, nobody is going to lose sleep over Telesco getting fired, either. Cleaning house completely should absolutely be on the table with the Raiders in position to land a new franchise quarterback in the draft in 2025.