Metric raises concerns about the new Raiders coach’s methods.

Only one of the 35 men who was a head coach in the NFL this season fared worse in one particular metric than former Raiders coach Josh McDaniels.

That was Antonio Pierce.

I’m not saying this to be a buzzkill for a fan base that seems as excited and optimistic as it has been since the team’s move to Las Vegas. It’s not meant as a critique of the removal of Pierce’s interim tag and his promotion to head coach

But in all the excitement about how inspirational Pierce has proven to be as a leader and how beloved he is in the locker room, it’s important to remember those things do tend to calm down. His success or failure is going to be determined by how his teams perform on the field, not by how much he is loved and respected.

McDaniels finished 34th in the Aggressiveness Index, an annual report that is based on a formula developed by Aaron Schatz, formerly of Football Outsiders and now with FTN Fantasy.

It’s a metric that is based not on analytics modeling, but on a scale of when NFL coaches actually go for it on fourth down.

Pierce was behind McDaniels in 35th. Based on how NFL coaches generally operate — which is already far too conservatively — there was an expectation Pierce would have gone for it on about 9.2 attempts. He actually sent his offense out there six times for a score of 0.65.

The formula was designed on a scale in which 1.0 is the average coach historically and excludes obvious situations when a team is trailing by multiple scores or by any amount in the last five minutes of a game, as well as the last 10 seconds of the first half.

So what does this mean? It will take some time to know the answer. Pierce didn’t select his offensive staff and was handcuffed by an immobile rookie quarterback, so perhaps he just had such little trust in his offense that he defaulted to a conservative approach, especially with a good kicker and punter.