NFL Week 10 Thursday

RAIDERS @ BRONCOS - 8:15 PM

---

Raiders man... this woulda been 2 outta 3 wins. The Raiders then traded away Jakobi Meyers... not that trading Jakobi Meyers is a definite sign of throwing in the towel, but it's certainly not a great look.

There was a positive takeaway from the game though. Geno Smith played well... he threw 4 TDs in the game and most importantly, he handled himself well under pressure.

Now, does that mean he's ready to go into Denver and deal with these blitz packages? The answer is no... probably not.

We're talking about the Broncos pass rush... against a Raiders offensive line that's still missing Kolton Miller.

Now Denver's defense is still not 100%.

The LOS battle on this side of the ball is so one-sided... gonna make it really challenging for the Raiders to sustain any sort of offensive success.

We know Denver runs a lotta man coverage. They're gonna jam the Raiders receivers at the LOS, put an extra set of eyes on Brock Bowers... and I'm not sure what the Raiders can really do to combat that. Pete Carroll's not an idiot... so he's gonna come out with some kind of gameplan... but it's tough to see it on paper.

I wanted to see how the Raiders offense looked against other teams that blitz. Surprisingly, they haven't played a ton. The only two defenses they've seen this year that are in the top 10 of blitz rate are Jacksonville and Kansas City. That is a bit confusing... because those are literally the best and worst offensive performances of the year.

We do know there's probably not gonna be much of a rushing attack here. The Raiders have been struggling to run the ball all year... and since Kolton Miller got hurt, it's been almost non-existent.

If you're betting the Raiders, you're looking at the other side of the ball.

Earlier in the year, I was pretty big on this Raiders run defense. I gotta say... hasn't looked as great recently. They're not getting gashed on the ground or anything... but it's not as great as it looked in the first few games.

Do we think Denver has a strong run game? I really can't decide. On one hand, they've run the ball pretty consistently all season. On the other hand, they've seen a lot of bad defensive fronts.

And as far as Bo Nix... the Raiders pass rush has been pretty disappointing so far this year. And the Broncos offensive line is elite. So Bo Nix should have plenty of clean pockets to throw from in this game... but Bo Nix has been one of the least efficient QBs in the NFL from a clean pocket.

He did not play well in Houston... which isn't a big deal. Houston has one of the best defenses in the NFL... he played great against Dallas... which also isn't a big deal because every QB pieces them up. Before that, it's not the most impressive body of work.

We've seen Denver play several games against bad teams this year. They've won by margin in a couple of them... but Titans, Jets, Giants and Texans all kept it within this number.

I wanna play the Raiders here... there's been a lot of criticism thrown at Pete Carroll and Chip Kelly regarding Ashton Jeanty not getting the ball enough. I don't see how they're able to run the ball in the game but I do think they'll make it a point to force feed him. So maybe that points towards an under?

Gimme Raiders +9.5 and under 42.5.