'Feels a lot different' - Raiders win in Antonio Pierce's debut - ESPN

LAS VEGAS — Antonio Pierce said he has had «butterflies» only three times in his professional football life — before his first game as an NFL player in 2001, before the Super Bowl he played in for the New York Giants in 2008, and on Sunday, before his first game as interim coach of the Las Vegas Raiders.

So he went back to basics.

At the beginning of the work week, hours after he was promoted from linebackers coach in the wake of Josh McDaniels' Halloween night firing, Pierce handed out blank sheets of paper to Raiders players.

The thinking? To symbolize a fresh start. The result? The Raiders could use their finest penmanship to write "30-6," the final score of their win Sunday against the Giants, the NFL's largest margin of victory immediately following a midseason coaching change since 2015.

And as Pierce noted, the Raiders made history with a Black interim coach, a Black interim general manager in Champ Kelly, and a Black female team president in Sandra Douglass Morgan.

«You don't take that for granted,» Pierce said. «Humbled by the opportunity.»

Sure, the Raiders improved to only 4-5 following a pair of lackluster losses at the Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions. But the energy and emotion with which they played — a large part supplied by the ultra-intense Pierce — was something entirely different. Something the Raiders hope to build upon in the second half of the season.

«We've got a new leader right now,» said All-Pro receiver Davante Adams, «and it's somebody that we can get behind and somebody that played the game. So it makes it a lot easier for us to connect with him, because he understands the mind of a player and he's done a really good job just making sure we understand that it's not about him — it's about this