Silver And Black Pride
Ability to naturally relate to his defenders and impart know-how from prior experience is good for Ricky Manning Jr., Las Vegas
Ricky Manning Jr. is taking a grounded approach when it comes to his Las Vegas Raiders cornerbacks. The Silver & Black’s new position coach is a player-turned-coach who not only performed at a high level during his six-year NFL career, but spent the next 12 seasons coaching up prep, collegiate, and pro defenders before landing in the desert.
Manning Jr., who had a brief stint as a Raider back in 2009 in the offseason before being waived, comes over from the New York Jets where he was on Robert Saleh’s staff as a defensive assistant, a post he got in 2021. Before that, he was the Seattle Seahawks assistant defensive backs coach from 2016 to 2017.
Wanting his cornerbacks to be aggressive, opportunistic, and tough, Raiders head coach Antonio Pierce did well to bring in Manning Jr. to coach up the cornerbacks in Las Vegas. The 43-year-old Manning Jr. storied careers at UCLA (13 career interceptions which is good for seventh all-time in Bruins history) and in the NFL (14 total regular season interceptions) highlight innate takeaway skills. And that’s something the entire Raiders cornerback room needs more of.
Manning Jr. spent six season in the NFL as a thief of a cornerback after being the 82nd player taken overall out of UCLA by the Carolina Panthers in the 2003 NFL Draft intercepting 14 total passes in the regular season and five more in the playoffs.
The individual highlight in postseason play arrived in the 2004 NFC Championship Game where Manning Jr. picked off Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb three times in the Panthers’ 14-3 road win.
Manning Jr. knows what it takes to play at a high level and can impart that to the young corners in Las Vegas which amplifies how sound players-turned-coaches can be in the league.
“One, it’s the energy. The energy is different,” Manning Jr. said when asked how beneficial it is for a team to have former players as coaches, after the Raiders OTAs last week. “You know, it’s just different when you got guys that got blood, sweat and tears in this thing, and you can feel that. I can’t help it, you know, and we have fun with it too. So immature, it’s hilarious. We were so immature, but it’s because we are former players who are just having fun and it just helped the business side of it, the football side of it. It be so much better, such a fun experience, and it’s just so natural.
“So, I think that’s the benefit of having a bunch of guys that played the game and also coached it at a high level and have been around some great coaches. These players get to benefit from that, and we get to benefit from it as coaches as well.”
Similar to how Raiders players across the board praised Pierce for...
