Pierece's Animal Neglect
Antonio Pierce’s promotion to Raiders head coach an embarrassment for NFL
By Phil Mushnick
Published Nov. 4, 2023, 3:12 p.m. ET
Last week, the most dysfunctional, criminally inclined franchise on Goodell’s feckless watch, the Las Vegas Raiders — a recidivist producer of astonishingly misguided misanthropic first-round draft picks, one recently sentenced for vehicular homicide, another for brandishing illegal guns — named ex-Giants linebacker Antonio Pierce as its temporary head coach presumably with Goodell’s approval.
A more discriminate, cautious chief executive would not have allowed this, and the Raiders, knowing that Goodell would never indulge such, wouldn’t have even tried it.
After all, Pierce’s NFL bio reads more as an indictment than an endorsement.
Another bad-is-good ESPN hire immediately after Pierce’s 2010 retirement, one of his first assignments as a national TV NFL analyst was to provide week-of behavioral advice to young players about to appear in their first Super Bowl.
Pierce advised, first and foremost, mature, stay-in, sober, focus-on-the game civil conduct.
Left unspoken was Pierce’s own Super Bowl week conduct, in 2008, when in Arizona for the Giants’ win over the undefeated Patriots.
Pierce was no rookie at the time.
He was 30, but apparently not old enough to realize that the flagrant neglect of pet animals is both revolting and criminal.
He had abandoned his two pit bulls at his New Jersey home to take care of themselves, food and all.
Only when neighbors alerted cops that his two pit bulls were on the loose and unattended at his home did animal control arrive to learn that neither had been vaccinated against rabies, and one was sick and undernourished.
Coach Pierce, as he’ll be identified in Sunday’s game against the Giants, pleaded guilty to animal neglect and paid a $1,300 fine.
At the time the Giants were playing the Pats in the Super Bowl, Pierce was making nearly $5 million per — not enough to pay someone to tend to his dogs.
Perhaps I haven’t lived long or hung out with the wrong crowd, but I’ve yet to know anyone charged with neglecting to animals. You?
Later that year, Pierce was with teammate Plaxico Burress in a nightclub early one Saturday morning when Burress shot himself with the .40-caliber Glock he illegally carried.
Pierce’s actions, from that moment on, again seemed designed to cause deep wonder and suspicion.
He didn’t call for an ambulance — immediate medical attention for Burress — but chose to drive him to the hospital, where Burress was registered under a phony name, then Pierce reportedly left the hospital with Burress’ gun stashed in his car.
The doctor who treated Burress would be suspended for failure to report a gunshot wound. Days later, according to reports, the cops had to find Pierce, not vice versa, in search of that gun.
And the Giants had a game at Washington the next day.
Again, I can only go with my values, my sense of right from wrong.
But I can’t recall the last time a colleague of mine shot himself while in a nightclub early in the morning the day before our biggest day of work, so I’m not sure what I’d have done.
But unlike ESPN and now the NFL’s Raiders, I would not have placed Pierce on my payroll in any capacity, let alone head coach.
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