Can the Las Vegas Raiders actually slow down 3-time champ Patrick Mahomes in 2024 by emulating the Bad Boys Pistons?

Highlights

Antonio Pierce aims to disrupt Mahomes’ game with a tough defense akin to the ‘Bad Boys’ Pistons of the late 1980s.
The team’s December win against the Chiefs shows the tactic can work.
The Raiders have to make sure they are not too aggressive as rules typically favor quarterbacks.

Antonio Pierce knows that it won’t be easy to get his Las Vegas Raiders past Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs, especially if the two AFC West foes were to meet in the playoffs.

During a recent appearance on his Second-Team All-Pro pass rusher Maxx Crosby’s podcast, the Raiders’ head coach revealed his plan to get under the star quarterback’s skin:

We’ve got the Jordan rules and we’ve got what I’m calling now, from now on as long as I’m here, the Patrick Mahomes rules. You remember when Jordan was going through it with the Pistons, all those guys in the ’80s before he became Air Jordan, the Pistons used to whip his [behind]. Any time he came to the hole: elbows, feeling him, love taps. We’re in his head, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, I’m touching you.

Of course, what Pierce is referring to was Detroit Pistons’ coach Chuck Daly’s strategy for stopping Michael Jordan in the late 1980s. The scheme basically required Pistons players to lay the wood on Jordan every time he got in the paint, to remind him that they were there, and they weren’t going to give him anything easy. He’d have to earn everything he got and go through some pain to get it.

Pierce landed the permanent job in Las Vegas after leading the team to a 5-4 record during his time as the interim head coach. One of those five wins was a 20-14 victory over the Chiefs, where Pierce’s defense sacked Mahomes four times and returned an interception for a touchdown. So, is this all talk, or does Pierce actually have a few tricks up his sleeve?

Raiders handed the Chiefs one of their worst losses

Andy Reid credited the loss with helping Kansas City get back on track

So far in his career, Mahomes hasn’t been easy to rattle, and he looked unflappable during Kansas City’s Super Bowl run last postseason. Chiefs coach Andy Reid told reporters that the loss against Pierce and the Raiders was a primary factor for the team’s late-season turnaround:

I texted him. I just said, hey, beautiful facility, first of all, and I appreciate you kicking our tail because you taught us a lesson. You get complacent in this business; the margin between winning and losing is tiny.

Pierce was a standout linebacker in the NFL and was known for his toughness and leadership. Although it’s a small sample size to analyze, his Raiders team has very much played in that image. Las Vegas had the league’s best scoring defense after Pierce took over for Josh McDaniels.

Still, the team will have to make sure that their aggressive play doesn’t go over the line. The NFL has several rules in place to protect the quarterback, and those rules tend to be especially enforced when a star like Mahomes is playing.

Can the strategy actually work against the star quarterback?

Few teams have had much success against Mahomes

It’s one thing to devise a plan to take down Mahomes, but putting it into practice in a real-game scenario is an entirely different deal. During his career, the quarterback has a losing record against only three teams in the regular season: the Buffalo Bills, the Indianapolis Colts, and the Tennessee Titans.

Former Tennessee head coach Mike Vrabel won two of his three games against the Chiefs quarterback. Vrabel employs the kind of attacking style Pierce favors in his defense. The Titans were able to get to Mahomes often in their three matchups, compiling 10 sacks and forcing Mahomes to throw 153 passes.

While the quarterback threw for 1,098 yards in the three games against Tennessee, he only threw four touchdown passes against two interceptions. The quarterback’s 89.2 career rating against the Titans is well below his 103.5 career rating.

The Colts are the only team to defeat Mahomes without losing a game. In their two victories, Indianapolis sacked Mahomes five times and made the passing game incredibly difficult. In his two games against the Colts, Mahomes completed just 56.4% of his passes, well below his career norm of 67.2%.

Patrick Mahomes stats vs Antonio Pierce-led Raiders

Stat
vs. Raiders
2023 Average

Passing Yards
235
261.4

Passing TDs
1
1.7

INTs
1
0.9

Sacks Taken
4
1.7

Show more

The Bills’ record of 1-3 against Mahomes in the regular season needs a disclaimer considering the Chiefs’ gunslinger is 3-0 against them in the playoffs. The Bills’ pathway to success against Mahomes was similar to that of the Colts and Titans. They hit the quarterback plenty (eight sacks) and made him throw a ton, averaging 38.5 attempts per game. The Bills also picked Mahomes off five times in those games, an astonishing number for the usually responsible quarterback.

Pierce also has some experience with making a GOAT-level quarterback turn into a shell of himself. He was part of the New York Giants defense that harassed and assaulted Tom Brady to upset the perfect Patriots in Super Bowl 42. The G-Men sacked Brady five times, held him to a 60 percent completion rate, forced a fumble, and generally made his life difficult all game long.

Similar tactics were employed to keep Mahomes out of the end zone entirely during his lone Super Bowl loss to the Brady-led Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl 55. In that game, the prodigy was sacked three times, hit nine times, picked off twice, and held to a 53.1 completion percentage, his second-lowest such percentage in the postseason.

Overall, though, Mahomes has utterly dominated the Raiders in his time as the Chiefs quarterback, tossing 30 touchdowns and just four interceptions while winning 10 of his twelve games against the Raiders.

Still, Pierce’s defense looked strong in his team’s victory over the three-time Super Bowl champion, and his squad will certainly try to replicate that performance as they gear up for next season. Pierce shouldn’t have any trouble getting his players up for a Chiefs matchup either:

We saw red, we hate red. There’s a difference between dislike and hatred. There’s a hatred for the Chiefs.

Source: The Rush Podcast

All statistics courtesy of Pro Football Reference unless otherwise noted.