The Raiders fired first-year offensive coordinator Luke Getsy, offensive line coach James Cregg and quarterbacks coach Rich Scangarello on Sunday, the team announced via social media.
The decision came just hours after Las Vegas suffered a 41-24 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. In his postgame news conference, coach Antonio Pierce signaled that change was coming as the Raiders head into their Week 10 bye.
“We’ve got the bye week to reset and we’ll look at everything,” Pierce said. “And when I say everything, (I mean everything).”
The Raiders have had one of the worst offenses in the league this season. They’re averaging just 18.7 points (26th) and 4.6 yards per play (29th). Now, they’ll turn to a new play caller in an effort to spark the offense.
It’s unclear who the Raiders will turn to as interim offensive coordinator, but it seems pass game coordinator Scott Turner is the front runner. Prior to joining the Raiders last season, he worked as the Washington Commanders’ offensive coordinator from 2020 to 2022. Receivers coach Edgar Bennett and senior offensive assistant Joe Philbin are other former NFL offensive coordinators on staff who could theoretically assume the duties.
When Pierce was hired in January, his first major task was constructing a staff around him. And while he hired Getsy in February, that wasn’t his first choice. Pierce came to an agreement to hire Kliff Kingsbury, but Kingsbury withdrew his name from consideration over a contract dispute. He went on to be hired as the Washington Commanders’ offensive coordinator and has helped them engineer one of the best offenses in the NFL.
That’s when Pierce turned to Getsy, who’d just gotten fired after a two-year stint as the Chicago Bears’ offensive coordinator from 2022-23. Even as a backup plan, it was widely viewed as a curious decision at the time since the Bears’ offense was mediocre during his tenure. Chicago finished 23rd in scoring offense in 2022 and 18th in scoring offense in 2023.
Pierce hired Getsy anyway with the hope that he’d be able to install a run-first, physical approach complemented by a passing game centered around quick-hitting concepts to create opportunities for yards after the catch, play-action and shots down the field. In Getsy’s nine games on the job, however, that never materialized.
To be fair, there were plenty of personnel issues that contributed to that. The Raiders already cycled through three quarterbacks in Gardner Minshew, Aidan O’Connell and Desmond Ridder, and the results haven’t been pretty with any of them. Running backs Alexander Mattison and Zamir White have struggled. The offensive line has been riddled with injuries and performed poorly. The receiving corps was weakened significantly by the departure of Davante Adams via trade to the New York Jets last month. And while tight end Brock Bowers has been a stud, the overall position group has been hurt by the prolonged absence of Michael Mayer due to personal reasons.
With that being said, Getsy was doing a poor job as a play caller. He attempted to be creative but was unable to get the players to nail the details necessary to execute those outside-the-box play calls properly. He was conservative, stubborn and predictable. The offense might not have had a legitimate chance to be good with this personnel, but there’s an argument to be made that it shouldn’t have been this bad.
“I think it has to get better,” Pierce said Wednesday when asked about the need for Getsy to improve as a play caller. “Like I told our staff and I told our players, it’s (on) all of us. It’s easy to sit here and just point the finger at Luke or myself, but you look at O-line play, quarterbacks, running backs, turnovers, missed blocks, missed executions on plays, alignments on details. All those things have got to get cleaned up. So, yeah, it does start with the coordinator. He’s got to be the one that takes the fall for that and gets most of the blame.”
Getsy took the fall on Sunday. That’ll alleviate some of the pressure on Pierce for now, but he needs to make plenty of improvements himself as the Raiders have gotten off to a rough 2-7 start to the season. He’s only in his first full year as coach after a nine-game role as interim coach last year — and owner Mark Davis is well aware that there would be growing pains given his inexperience. But if the Raiders keep having embarrassing performances like the one they had against the Bengals, questions about Pierce’s own security will intensify.
“We’re going to have to reset on the bye week,” Pierce said. “We’ve got enough time to sit there and really, really, really dive into what we can do to fix this. Because it can’t continue.”
Cregg joined the Raiders after spending two seasons as the assistant offensive line coach with the San Francisco 49ers, but his implementation of the wide zone run scheme has been a disaster and the offensive line has been underwhelming and recently very injured.
Scangarello most recently served as the offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach at the University of Kentucky in 2022.
Required reading
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(Photo: Chris Unger / Getty Images)
