Video: Pierson-El catches TD in Raiders preseason game
West Potomac graduate De’Mornay Pierson-El continues to make his case for a roster spot with the Oakland Raiders, catching six passes Thursday against Green Bay — including his first touchdown of the preseason.
Pierson El’s touchdown came in the fourth quarter and put the Raiders in position to have a shot at winning after trailing much of the game. Quarterback Nathan Peterman found Pierson-El after he beat man-to-man coverage on a corner route. The 17-yard TD was Pierson El’s third catch on the scoring drive.
Pierson-El also had a 17-yard punt return that he nearly broke loose on in the Raiders’ 23-22 comeback win against the Packers.
A 2014 West Potomac grad, Pierson-El was a standout football and basketball player for the Wolverines before going to the University of Nebraska. Pierson-El was slowed by injuries during his time with the Huskers, but he managed to impress enough as a receiver and punt returner to get a shot at the Washington Redskins training camp after graduating in 2018.
Pierson-El was released by the Redskins, but kept pursing a pro career. He played for the CFL’s Montreal Alouettes for a stint and then with the AAF’s Salt Lake City Stallions earlier this year. Pierson-El had a strong showing for the Stallions during the league’s short run and was signed by the Raiders before the NFL training camp season started.
It remains to be seen if Pierson-El will make the regular season roster. NFL teams must cut their rosters to 53 players by August 31. As an undrafted free agent, Pierson-El started camp as an underdog to make the final roster, but he now ranks second on the team in receiving during the preseason and has handled all of the Raiders punt return duties.
One problem facing Pierson-El is that the Raiders have a deep receiving corps, with Antonio Brown, Tyrell Williams, rookie Hunter Renfrow and Dwayne Harris considered locks to make he final roster. Veteran Ryan Grant is still in the competition to be the Raiders starting slot receiver, and other young players like Keelan Doss have also impressed.
Harris is expected to handle the Raiders’ return duties once the regular season starts, but Pierson-El has nevertheless been able to showcase his versatility there. In addition to his long return on Thursday, Pierson-El had an electrifying punt return against the Los Angeles Rams in the Raiders’ first preseason game.
If you watch the video and wonder why the announcer says that the goal line is the 10-yard line, it’s because the game was played in Winnipeg, home of the CFL’s Blue Bombers. A CFL field is very close to the size of a soccer field; it has a 55-yard line and the end zones are 20 yards deep, so the length of the field is 150 yards. It’s also wider than an NFL field.
That’s not a huge deal, but the problem came with the goalposts. On a CFL field, the goalposts sit just behind the goal line, so they had to be removed and replaced with NFL-appropriate ones located at the back of the NFL-sized 10-yard deep end zones. The holes were covered with turf. You can see where the CFL goalposts are normally located at 0:07 of the video; look for the square to the right of the goalposts and to the left of the referee and the Packers’ player who just happened to be in the vicinity.
Both teams, especially Green Bay, balked at the thought of having to deal with those patched-up holes, pretty much every starter was scratched, and they ended up “shrinking” the field to 80 yards plus the end zones with no kickoffs, among other things. They came very close to cancelling the game half an hour before it started. Everyone agrees that this entire thing was a debacle, from the organization to the prices to the field issue.