Antonio Pierce is back on-air after being fired as Las Vegas Raiders head coach last year, and he joined CBS’ NFL Today+ for Week 12 with some interesting news about the league’s most-talked-about young quarterback.
As a recently employed NFL head coach, Pierce was in the building for the Raiders’ scouting meetings last fall. And he believes that the organization was “on board” with drafting then-Colorado star Shedeur Sanders before the leadership change that resulted in his firing.
Sanders is set to make his first NFL start on Sunday against those same Raiders, and Pierce is suddenly one of the only pro-Sanders analysts in NFL media with actual firsthand knowledge of the scouting and intel leading into the polarizing QB’s surprise fall in April’s NFL Draft.
“He was one of our top choices,” Pierce said. “If I would have stayed there, there’s no way he goes in the fifth round. I’m making that choice and the decision that we’re drafting him. Marc Davis was on board with that, our organization was on board. We believed in what we saw with Shedeur.”
Antonio Pierce and the Raiders were all in on Shedeur Sanders pic.twitter.com/Z8xz1F0p7R
— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) November 23, 2025
Still, despite Pierce’s experience as a high-school and college coach, his scout on Sanders appears to fall back on some of the same intangible tropes that followed him at Colorado.
“He’s born for this,” Pierce said. “His pedigree is for moments of this magnitude that he’s going into.”
Pierce believes Sanders can handle the pressure he will face on Sunday at Allegiant Stadium.
“I think he will have an exceptional game today,” Pierce said. “I expect him to do well.”
It sounds as if Pierce is sold on Sanders’ gravitas being a net positive, whereas many teams seemed to count it as a negative during the pre-draft process.
But the questions that analysts and anonymous personnel execs have raised all year about his proclivity for taking sacks and his lack of athleticism have not gone away.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.