Week 11: Las Vegas Raiders

Injury Report:

On Injured Reserve: Dalton Wagner T, Kana’i Mauga LB, Darien Butler LB, Brandon Facyson CB, Roderic Teamer S

Quarterback

After an offseason of some drama on this point, Jimmy Garoppolo is a Raider and I unfortunately have to re-remember how to spell his name. Garoppolo was no guarantee to be a Raider after a physical unearthed a still-unhealed foot that led the Raiders to put some offset language in the contract, allowing for a no-cost cut in training camp if Jimmy wasn’t ready. Conspiracy theories abounded, but the reality was boring: a cheap owner wanted insurance. Insurance seems wise, as Garoppolo’s body has never really been made for the pros: in his first action as Tom Brady’s Suspension Backup in 2016, he separated his shoulder against the Dolphins. He played from Week 12-Week 17 for San Francisco after the 2017 trade, but then tore his ACL in week 3 of 2018. In 2019, mysterious knee issues led Shanahan to double down on the run game, including an NFC Championship win in which the team attempted 8 passes. The Super Bowl was a bit of a disaster for Garoppolo, most famous for an eyes-closed pass that more or less ended the game. In 2020, he gets a high ankle sprain in week 2, returns for a Dolphins game in which he is benched because he doesn’t look healthy, gets re-inserted in the lineup, and then ends up on IR by week 8 for the same ankle. 2021 is defined by hand and shoulder issues in the postseason, with the team losing to the Rams in the NFC Championship due to a dropped INT. Last year, Garoppolo was demoted but had to step back in for the team after a broken ankle for Trey Lance. He promptly put together a season that marked his highest ever passing rating for a season in which he started at least 3 games. And then? The Dolphins roll up on his foot and the season is over. The 49ers have elected to roll into next season with Mr. Irrelevant as the starter provided health, with former bust Sam Darnold and, unfortunately, a likely future bust in Trey Lance. Not a ringing endorsement of where Garoppolo is at this point. Any discussion of his play simply must come with the injury caveat. That, more than anything else, is why he will be playing for Las Vegas. Garoppolo continued his injury-plagued run, missing week 4 and week 7 before a true benching as the entire Raiders leadership was swept out (more to come on that). Before his benching, Garoppolo had 7 TDs to 9 INTs, and 2 big time throws* to 6 turnover-worthy plays*. The new coaching staff determined that they were much more intrigued by a young 4th-round pick named Aidan O’Connell, and pivoted to his evaluation in the middle of the year.  

O’Connell is a relatively old prospect, playing 6 years of college football at Purdue and not getting a full-time shot as a starter until year 4 as a preferred walk-on, but he did not actually make it through a season until year 5. He is 25 years old, the same age as Tua and three years older than fellow rookie starters C.J. Stroud and Bryce Young. At Purdue, O’Connell was best in 2021, throwing 28 TDs to 11 INTs, and he regressed in 2022 on a worse Purdue team. O’Connell is utterly immobile, with -274 yards in college (they count sacks as rushes there). He has not run once in the pros, with 5 carries for 6 yards, all on QB sneaks. O’Connell has been pretty terrible across his 3 starts this year, completing passes at a good rate (63.5%) but his 6.5 yards per attempt* ranks just 29th in the league, and he has 3 big time throws to 5 turnover-worthy plays. If you’re looking for a bright side there, all three big time throws came with the new coaching staff and O’Connell only had one turnover-worthy play in that time. O’Connell is throwing very quickly, with less than 2.5 seconds time to throw*. Sacking O’Connell should be difficult, taking just 3 in the last 2 games. When forced to hold the ball for an average of 2.74 seconds against the Chargers in his first start, he took 7 sacks. Putting the Raiders in a hole is a dire situation for the young starter, and should be a priority for any team playing him. Still, the Jets pressured him 14 times on Sunday Night Football but only converted 3 sacks, a good rate for O’Connell. O’Connell is the starter as long as he’s healthy according to the Raiders, so growing pains will be an accepted part of the process.

Coaching

If the Raiders were not cash poor, would they have fired Josh McDaniels after the abysmal 2022 saw fractures at every level of the organization? I’m sure they would have loved to can him but, as the team will be paying Jon Gruden until my grandchildren are in college, the die was cast and McDaniels returned for the start of the year. For McDaniels, this hire was a chance to rewrite the narrative on his strange and disastrous forays into coaching in his previous stops. After taking the Patriots offense to new heights with a fully-arrived Tom Brady from 2005-2008, McDaniels settled into a new gig with the Denver Broncos, swapping the talented Jay Cutler for Tim Tebow and Kyle Orton. Then, when a 3-9 start in 2010 guaranteed a worse record than the 2009 first season of McDaniels’s tenure, the Broncos fired him. Various transgressions followed him, from the nightmare personnel decisions to videotaping opponents (an incident the Broncos deemed “unforgivable” due to potential penalty) to benching star players. When McDaniels was hired the next year by the Rams as OC, they literally had to release a statement saying that he would have no hand in personnel moves. That’s how you know you blew it: a guy taking a job with no personnel power has to pinky swear he won’t try any funny business. That 2011 Rams team, incidentally, had the single worst DVOA in the league that year. McDaniels went back to New England, collecting championships in 2014 and 2016 with a less explosive but highly potent Patriots offense. This next run of greatness culminated again in a head coaching opportunity with the Colts, but he pulled out the same day as his announcement and his agent actually fired HIM. And so it was back to New England for another championship in 2018. It took four more years of solid Patriots offenses despite Brady’s departure (one fast start by Cam Newton and an efficient year with Mac Jones in 2021) to get McDaniels back to a place where he could give head coaching one more try. In terms of metrics, the results weren’t that bad: McDaniels improved the offense in minor ways, upping the DVOA efficiency from 20th to 15th in the league. Marginal improvement was disappointing, unfortunately, because of expectations created by a trade for star WR and QB Derek Carr’s literal best friend Davante Adams. Carr left this offseason, and McDaniels was forced by the market to sign an old friend, Jimmy Garoppolo. And there, more oddball shit happened when the celebratory signing press conference was delayed, only for the media to discover months later that Jimmy G had foot surgery far later than expected and could be cut for no cost if he didn’t pass his physical by training camp. Already attempting to save his job a year into his tenure, McDaniels banked on a healthy and knowledgeable Jimmy to couple with five WR and two TE signings to take the Raiders offense to the next level. It didn’t happen. The offense, even after two decent performances (they dropped 30 against the Giants after only scoring more than 20 once), is still 29th in DVOA in the NFL. And so, before that Giants game, McDaniels was fired and former Giants Pro Bowl LB Antonio Pierce was elevated from LB coach to serve as the interim coach. He promoted Bo Hardegree, a John Fox find who was a heady backup QB at the University of Tennessee and followed Adam Gase up the coaching ranks, to call the offense. The experience has been disjointed, with poorly timed and blocked runs mixed in with a popgun pass game. Nothing positive has come out of the Raiders offense yet, as even stars Josh Jacobs and Davante Adams look like they’re moving through mud every play. It seems relatively unlikely that the offense the Raiders have been looking for since hiring Gruden will manifest this weekend.

Defensively, McDaniels hitched his wagon to the Patrick Graham Experience and Raiders fans lived with it in agony over the 2022 season. Dolphins fans know Graham from his first foray into defensive coordinating in 2019, filled with blunders from the tanking team and complicated by Minkah Fitzpatrick’s trade midway through the season. Graham’s defense that year was the worst in the league by a cardinal mile, famed for the disastrous zero blitz that allowed Mason Rudolph an avenue to claw back on a Monday Night Football game that kept the Dolphins winless. Players seemed frustrated by the complicated nature of the defense, and a real lack of talent left no one looking particularly pretty. Xavien Howard managed just 5 games, and a team transitioning looked pretty bad. Graham left town with Flores’s permission to the New York Giants, where he partnered with Joe Judge over two disappointing seasons of relative buffoonery. The Giants were 17th in the NFL in defensive DVOA efficiency in both of those years, but the team took a huge step back against the run in his second year. To be fair to Graham, he has never coordinated a defense with top-tier talent: to be less fair to Graham, players who showed themselves well elsewhere have never played particularly well with him. While Dolphins fans know him for a zero blitz style that Flores and Josh Boyer continued to use in Miami (leading the league or coming damn close in blitz rate), the Graham scheme in Las Vegas ranked 12th in the league in blitz rate, a much more rational 26.2% of snaps. Vegas needed blitzes last year to help against the run, where they regressed mightily, in large part due to the need to rebuild their interior defense (a problem Graham inherited). And yet, they have remained average throughout this tumultuous year, occupying the exact middle in DVOA (16th). They’re somewhat inscrutable as a unit in 2023: they allowed 30 points twice, once to the Bills (makes sense) and once to the Bears (wut?), for 20.5 points per game in total (13th). To the eye test, the Raiders have been a surprisingly fun team to watch: Antonio Pierce’s elevation to coach has put a renewed emphasis on a defense that was already playing just fine. While two of the games may have been played against terrible New York Team offenses, the Raiders have allowed just over 14 points over the last three games. Interestingly, the aggressive Graham has dropped his blitz rate far more than previous stops, blitzing at the 7th lowest rate (lower than the Dolphins!) The Brian Flores blueprint is long gone, and Pierce’s influence on the team is felt in the attacking style of quick and ferocious linebackers ensuring they can be physical without compromising coverage. Is the Raiders team better than their average numbers? Probably not, but with all the chaos and personnel head-scratchers surrounding the team this year, accomplishing average has come with real highlights. The Raiders will have their hands full with an ascending Miami defense and the best offense they’ve faced since the early-season Bills. We’ll see how the interim coaching staff holds up in a visit to the Southeast.

Offense

Between Josh McDaniels and Jon Gruden, the Raiders have spent the better part of the decade heavily investing on offense, yet have remained plagued by mediocrity. The answer probably lies in the culture of the organization, and construction around some miscast pieces, and the biggest move the Raiders made was described above in the QB section (and is already an abject failure). What the Raiders are left with would excite you on most teams, but each of these individually exciting pieces must find a way to gel or the Raiders are looking at another mid-level season. Davante Adams is still one of the best receivers in football, finishing in PFF’s top 4 graded WRs* since prior to the pandemic. Last year, he was asked to make more vertical plays than he did in Aaron Rodgers’s quick passing attack, and he responded by setting his highest ever yards-per-catch mark and still pulling down 100 catches. That also meant he saw the most contested catch opportunities of his career (34) and he pulled down 15 such passes. He stayed over 2.1 yards per route run* (an elite volume+effectiveness number) for the fifth straight season. Adams is a finished product, ready to plug into any offense, but the Raiders have struggled to plug him in efficiently. He has the 3rd most targets in the league (95, 1 more than Tyreek Hill) but the 11th most catches (57) and 14th most yards (659) despite not yet having a bye week. His drop-off may be enough to miss Derek Carr for Raiders fans. Adams made comments over the offseason that suggested he is concerned about the direction of the team, and willing to voice it a la Jason Taylor in his Trent Green comments to Sports Illustrated years ago. A thing to monitor: Adams had his lowest amount of yards after catch since 2019, and at 30, his speed should be monitored going forward. This shows up on film, with separation a real issue compared to the Adams of old. Jakobi Meyers was signed from New England to be the new #2 receiver in Vegas, and he’s a strong option at the position. He is a shockingly crisp route runner with the ability to pull down contested catches* at a surprising clip, 13/23 last year and 20/29 on the stellar Patriots playoff run in 2021. The one bit of awkwardness is that he spent most of his time working the slot in New England. That would be fine if the Raiders had a 3rd receiver that works more outside, but the Raiders have Hunter Renfrow in the slot, who was an elite player there in 2021. Meyers has slot receiver numbers this year while playing just under 25% of snaps from the slot. As you can imagine given a #1 WR who is getting less separation and high volume and a #2 WR in Meyers with just 11 yards per catch, the Raiders lack a deep threat. They also lack a slot receiver. In 2021, Hunter Renfrow caught 111 passes for just north of 1000 yards and 9 TDs. The expectation that he would be unlocked with Adams there to also provide big plays ended up unfounded: Renfrow was injured and inconsistent, ending up with just 49 targets and a hugely diminished 1.13 yards per route run number. Rumors have continued to fly that Renfrow could be traded, which would make plenty of sense to a team that is still a couple years from contending, and Meyers would be perfect to slot into his position. It didn’t happen, and Renfrow has just 20 targets through 10 games (he dropped 3). The Raiders haven’t really seen anyone else move up the depth chart, with Tre Tucker and DeAndre Carter combining for just 15 targets. Why are Meyers and Adams being treated, like Hill and Waddle, as the entirety of a passing offense? It’s fool-hardy, and one of the clearest mistakes of the McDaniel personnel era. One of the interim staff’s first decisions was to figure out how to spread the ball around, and it started by involving the TE more. Rookie Michael Mayer steps in at TE to fill the void left by Darren Waller, and he is an absolute dude: physical in run after catch situations, surprisingly agile, and one of the best blockers in college football last year. His presence is a plus for Josh Jacobs, who is the defending rushing title winner in the NFL. Mayer was taken early in the 2nd round and scouts believe he can be an elite weapon. He caught the game-winning TD last week on an excellent extended jump ball catch in the endzone for his first career NFL TD. While he has been a standout in pass blocking situations, he is also a passable run blocker and should only get better. Jacobs, by the way, was the best RB in football last year. His 53 receptions for 400 yards was a good continuation of a surprising aspect of his game, but make no mistake, this is a traditional running back. He set a career high in carries, with 339, while also setting a career high in yards per attempt* with 4.9. Yes, he ran the ball more than ever and more effectively than ever when he was already a top half of the league starter. He utilized a planned gap blocking scheme with excellent efficiency, reading blocks effectively and shedding tackles en route to a 1,156 yard season just in yards after contact! That’s Derrick Henry and Nick Chubb level numbers, two guys seen as head and shoulders above every back in the league. After a sluggish year, the Raiders finally put games in his hands when McDaniels left. Prior to the Week 9 coaching change, Jacobs had carried the ball 20 or more times just twice. Against the Jets and Giants, Jacobs took 53 attempts for 214 yards, just over 4.1 yards per carry. It was a godsend in the two games, and Jacobs once again could showcase the best lateral movement skills in the league. You’ll see Sunday: Jacobs can, in one patient sidestep, leapfrog three gaps to find the open one, then explode to the outside with virtually no impact on his balance. Like Maxx Crosby, who we will discuss, Jacobs is a joy to watch with utterly unique skills; he is fun, even if he’s not the best or most complete player at his position. With the line still built to run, the Raiders would be foolish to not structure their offense around a power run game, a help also to their emerging defense.

That offensive line may not be the best in the league, but it is the only unit on the team that features two players who have played exceptionally well. The first is left tackle Kolton Miller, who has played up to his draft pedigree, much to the surprise of Draft Twitter. Miller was a laughably bad reach, seen as desperate after the Raiders missed on a gaping tackle need when Mike McGlinchy went before their selection. At 6’8”, Miller was frequently outmuscled in college, typically a surefire sign that a prospect will have serious problems going into the pros. Even if a prospect figures out their technique or adds muscle, the upside is limited when compared to guys who simply won with all the tools at the previous level. Additionally, leverage is so important, and a lineman that tall who can be that easily moved will always have trouble maintaining leverage against the powerful rushers of the NFL. Miller bucked that trend after his dreadful rookie season, improving diligently every year all the way into the elite ranks. He literally cut his pressures in half between a 65-pressure* rookie season (with 16 games) and a 33-pressure 2022 (with 17). This year, he’s allowed just 12 pressures in 9 games. He is absolutely a candidate for most improved player in this era of NFL offensive linemen. Jermaine Eluemenor got his first opportunity to start at the other tackle position last year after spending two years with Baltimore and two years in New England as a spot starter. His 2020 in New England was surprisingly good, but went unnoticed given the utter purgatory the team was in with Cam Newton. It was a sign of things to come. After a tough year in 2021 relegated again to spot starts, Eluemenor got his first full season at RT and balled out. He allows precious few pressures with just 26, though he lacks the mean streak in the run game that Miller displayed. With RT a position that requires more resources in the modern NFL, solidifying the spot with a 5th-round journeyman (who was on the Dolphins smh) is certainly a win. This year, the Raiders think they’ve actually done better than Eluemunor, relegating him to the 3rd tackle while Thayer Munford Jr., a 2nd-year pro with a really big personality drafted in the 7th round from Ohio State, goes with the starters. The results were positive to start, but he just allowed 5 pressures to the Jets last week. I would not be surprised to see Eluemunor back in the lineup. The situation is somewhat murky, as Miller missed the Jets game with a shoulder injury and just returned to practice Friday. The interior is where line play gets dicey. Dylan Parham allowed 55 pressures from LG, a staggeringly bad number, but was excellent pulling for Josh Jacobs. Yet more evidence for the need to run the football this year in Vegas. Funny enough, the situation was reversed in 2023: Parham has allowed a much more manageable 11 pressures, including none allowed in 4 of the last 5 games. Remember what I said above: Aidan O’Connell is getting the ball out much quicker, and is thus very helpful to a guard’s pressure numbers. Andre James is a brainy undrafted guy who took the Center reins from an All-Pro, Rodney Hudson, when the team ran out of space to pay him. He does not have the kind of strength or consistency you’d like in a key cog, but he is functional. He’s improved every year, but marginally. Undrafted journeyman Alex Bars at RG was the real problem for Vegas last year: he was frequently beaten off the ball, and graded poorly in PFF metrics all year. McDaniels liked him but acquiesced to competition late in camp from Buffalo castoff Greg Van Roten. Van Roten is playing the best season of his 13-year career. He, too, has not allowed a pressure in the last two weeks. If the interior is still dicey in terms of career production, the current dice roller is on a hot streak! The Raiders as a whole, though, average just 17.2 points per game, topping 20 just twice in a 21-17 win over the Patriots. That’s absolutely unreal. Here are their peers and the amount of times they’ve topped 20 points: the Titans (twice), the Panthers (three times), the Jets (twice), and the Patriots (twice). Only the nightmare QB-injured Giants have failed to climb above 20 more than once. And yet the Raiders are 5-5, the masters of the 17-13 win. 

Defense

As Josh McDaniels attempts to justify his scheme by investing heavily in his offense, the Raiders field a defensive unit that easily looks like a bottom 5 unit by roster talent alone. With one dependable edge, one disappointing star edge, and a host of miscast role players, there was no reason to project efficient play coming into 2023, and the Raiders seemed destined to play the game of seeing who might be around next year (including the coaches). And yet this unit has attacked all year, and been a joy to watch most weeks. First, what seems like it has staying power: Maxx Crosby is an elite nightmare pass rusher, absolutely lethal to tackles across the NFL now for the past two seasons. Crosby is nuts, tallying 189 pressures over the last two years (in 2022, good for 4th off the edge in total pressures, and good for 1st and 20 MORE THAN THE NEXT GUY in 2021! T.J. Watt won Defensive Player of the Year for his insane sack totals that year, but Crosby was arguably more effective). He has now proved that he belongs with the Bosas and Myles Garrett in the conversation for best edge rusher in the league. Crosby also posted top 5 run defense grades on PFF each of the last two years. He truly reminds me of Jason Taylor, perhaps the first player since Taylor retired to do so. Taylor had an inch on Crosby and weighed 10 pounds less (lol Jason Taylor was an alien), but he’s a lanky dude doing it all and absolutely putting opposing tackles on skates. This is a man who makes it difficult to run your offense on any day with any team and, if he had a capable front with him, he’d be even scarier. His 94 million dollar extension already looks like a bargain. On the other side, the Raiders plan involved maximizing 33-year-old Chandler Jones before a highly public mental health crisis led to multiple arrests, protective custody, released texts, and an eventual release. It’s a scary story for Jones, and the CTE discussions that followed Antonio Brown and Richie Incognito in the wake of erratic public behavior consistent with more severe personality disorders were all exhumed. Peaceful resolutions can be hard to reach, and the NFL is, as always, incapable of having the real conversation. Malcolm Koonce and Tyree Wilson have rotated on the other side, with Koonce the clear standout. He’s a poor run defender and tackler, but he has 9 pressures over the last 3 games, converting 2 to sacks. Wilson, in the meanwhile, has looked like he needs a year in the league through his 2023 rookie season, a disappointment after being drafted 7th overall. The defensive line also features two staggeringly bad interior guys, Bilal Nichols (undersized 3-tech without the power that made guys like Aaron Donald successful in the same spot, Nichols is a poor run defender) and Jerry Tillery. Tillery, a former first-round pick, is the recipient of the worst PFF grades I’ve ever seen, and has gotten the Dallas Thomas treatment, somehow bad enough that fans pick him out and blame him for the entire run defense of his team. Byron Young was drafted with hopes that he could be in the rotation as a 3rd-round pick. He, too, is undersized. In a weird moment from the draft, Byron Young was selected 7 picks before…Byron Young. If he doesn’t work out, the Raiders should sue the league and be like “We meant the other one.” Luckily for the Raiders, Patrick Graham brought in his Patriots South connections: former Dolphins Adam Butler and John Jenkins have excelled in their role. Jenkins, in particular, has 20 run stops* (15th best in the league) and 12 pressures. Linebacker was a worrying spot to start the year: Raiders shelled out too much money for Robert Spillane (Pittsburgh spent his career trying to replace him and, while dependable in the run, his lack of pedigree shows up in getting gashed by underneath passes), are still trying to justify the Divine Deablo 3rd-round pick by moving him from safety (still cannot cover a soul, even if they take safety off his plate), and trotted out last year’s undrafted disaster Luke Masterson (allowed 20 of 22 passes to be caught in his area* for 197 yards, 106 YAC, and a TD, good for an abysmal 119.1 passer rating). That said, I’ve enjoyed the Raiders LBs through the first half of 2022! Spillane hasn’t been great in coverage, allowing 279 yards through the air on 26 catches, but he has 3 INTs, including what was basically a game-winning pick against the Jets. Deablo isn’t missing tackles and has cut the yards per catch allowed from 10 to 7.5 yards. They’ve relegated Masterson to a run-specific role, and he’s been a guy who just flies up to make plays. The return of De’Von Achane to put pressure on these players will certainly matter, as they’ve been better but the overall career numbers suggest cracks in the middle.

And then you go to the secondary, where it’s difficult to imagine any of these guys playing more than a reserve role for most other teams. Nate Hobbs was a quality slot in 2021, but the 5th-rounder broke his hand in week 5 and struggled in his return. He was injured again in 2023, returning to the lineup in Week 8 after an ankle injury and playing relatively well. Marcus Peters was signed in late July to provide a veteran playmaking presence on the perimeter, but teams have been relatively successful in attacking him. He’s allowed a team-high 287 yards on 43 targets in coverage, getting 1 INT but allowing 3 TDs, with the longest being 72 yards. Amik Robertson seems to have decisively won the battle for the other corner spot, but he’s not much of an upgrade over the failed starter Jakorian Bennett other than snatching 2 opportunistic INTs. Much like Patrick Graham’s defense made Minkah Fitzpatrick demand an immediate ticket out of town, he similarly made his Vegas safeties’ lives hell in their first year in the defense in 2022. The promising Trevon Moehrig (a 2021 2nd-round pick pushed out of the first only due to injury concerns) was moved all over the field, and gave up a whopping 12.2 YPC and 4 TDs with just 5 pass breakups, good for a passer rating of 132.7. Passing on him was like passing Go in Monopoly in terms of easy profits. Marcus Epps turned an 88 tackle season for the Eagles into a nice payday for the Raiders (2 years, $12 million, a relatively high price tag) despite just one year of starting experience and similarly poor coverage. In 2023, both players are below average starters, allowing most passes to be caught and allowing QB ratings of over 100 in their area. You can sense a theme: no one in Vegas wows you with their coverage, and Graham’s defense calls for some tough coverage schemes. It hasn’t been so bad, as there’s no weak link that is particularly exploitable (which is a boon for Crosby to cause real havoc). Still, the Dolphins present an entirely new challenge that will really test the discipline of players up and down the Raiders roster.

Special Teams

Vegas has a strong specialist unit, headlined by the best kicker in 2022 (by PFF metrics, we all know Justin Tucker was the actual best). Daniel Carlson hit all but 1 of his extra points and went 34/37 on FGs. He was perfect inside of 40 and hit 11/13 above 50 yards. That’s an absolutely sick way to protect points and field position. Only Graham Gano’s 8/9 was a better percentage, but the kind of trust needed to shell 13 50+ attempts makes Carlson the clear winner between the two. This year, he’s back down to Earth, 17/20 on FGs (all misses above 40 again) and perfect on extra points. They’ve been more conservative on their tries, with just 3 attempts above 50 yards. A.J. Cole II was PFF’s second best punter in 2022, as well, giving the Raiders a new tandem resembling Janikowski and Lechler from days past. Cole was 3rd in yards per punt and 5th in net yardage, a real field flipper. He only had 28 punts inside the 20, but had just 1 touchback in the year, so his accuracy is on point, he just needs a better offense! In 2023, he has the 2nd best yards per attempt, the best net punt average by a full 2 yards, a 70 yard punt, 20 kicks inside the 20 (good for 7th), and somehow has seen just 35.1% of his kicks even be returned. That’s a credit, too, to great accuracy on directional kicks and excellent punt coverage to limit returns on deep punts. The Raiders had a pretty miserable kick return game (not shocking for a shallow team) with Ameer Abdullah averaging 21.1 yards per kick return and Keelan Cole averaging 6.1 on punts. This year, DeAndre Carter was added as the return specialist, and has had some cool returns, boasting a 10.7 yard punt return average and a 24.3 kick return average. This year, Brandon Bolden (another old Patriots South player) is the special teams ace, with 193 special teams snaps, but Abdullah has been better with 7 tackles.

Game Prediction

I admire this Raiders team, so I’ve been surprised to see Vegas bury them as 2 TD underdogs against the Dolphins. It’s a mark of disrespect handed to a rookie QB and rookie interim coach that no one saw helming a franchise in 2023. Such marks are fair: would I have been particularly confident in the Dan Campbell 2015 Dolphins squaring off against the Manning-led Broncos? That matchup would have featured a talent-poor offense against one of the best defenses in recent memory. In this Dolphins-Raiders matchup, the opposite is true: even after a bye, the Dolphins lead the NFL in total yardage and points. Even an overachieving Raiders defense couldn’t be expected to keep pace with that firepower, but add in an interim coach playing his first road game and you’re in for trouble. When it comes to specific matchups, there’s little use previewing which player needs to show up for a win. Outside of Tua, does it even matter who it is that goes off? If you pitched me a Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle, De’Von Achane, or Raheem Mostert dominated game, I wouldn’t be surprised. If you told me Cedrick Wilson or Jeff Wilson Jr. led in receiving or rushing respectively, I would simply assume the team won by 30 and garbage time was relatively fun. With the defense playing better, continuing a strong run of pass rush now paired with a tighter understanding of the defensive scheme, there are relatively few paths of victory available to the Raiders. I do not believe they walk that path. Instead, I’ll mention a few matchups that I believe test the Dolphins in interesting ways:

1. 1. Maxx Crosby vs. Austin Jackson: a matchup that would once be seen as a hilarious disaster in the making (and was in 2021, when Will Fuller V was driven into the dirt on an uncalled PI that lost Miami the game) is now an interesting game against two underrated players at their position. Consider this: Austin Jackson has allowed just 11 pressures in a fully healthy year, the best rate of his career by a cardinal mile. Tua has been hit just 3 times by Jackson’s defender. Want to hear something wilder? 4 of the 11 pressures he has allowed were in Week 1 against the Chargers edge tandem. So that’s less than 1 pressure per game allowed by Jackson since Week 2. Crosby’s bonafides are well documented in this article, and I will just add that he has made players with far better records than Jackson look silly. This is a gut check for Austin Jackson and, if Miami is slow out of the gate, I can guess why.
2. 2. Xavien Howard and Jalen Ramsey vs. Davante Adams and Jakobi Meyers: For physical and long defenders like Howard and Ramsey, a pesky player like Meyers can be a living nightmare. Meyers has been productive against the Dolphins back in New England, and Adams has been a far more pronounced part of the Raiders gameplan of late. Quick throws will be the plan and, if Howard and Ramsey can do their patented route jumping in Fangio’s defense, one of these guys will leave with a pick. If not, the Raiders will move between the 20s with ease (before dying out in the red zone, which is the Fangio plan).

• 3. Josh Jacobs vs. 11 dudes: I love watching Jacobs against any 11 dudes! Will any of the linebackers or defensive interior guys provide a truly annoying day for Jacobs? It says good things about Miami if they do, and limits the only real offensive threat the Pierce-led Raiders possess.

• 4. The Dolphins offense vs. themselves: Mike McDaniel has a real love/hate relationship with his run game in that it made his career but TYREEK HILL GO FAST! The Dolphins were spoiled in the beginning of the year with explosives off of long-developing runs. John Jenkins, Adam Butler, and Crosby will be trotted out to blow up a few runs. Can the Dolphins play with a run game that is content with the 5 yard pops? The common thread of the three losses now for Miami is a real lack of patience offensively, which leads to pressing and big mistakes when the team has a chance to come back.

No, I don’t believe a loss will happen tomorrow, and I believe that the 9-1 home streak that McDaniel and Tua enjoy together will stretch to 10-1. Expect the fight song 4 or more times, even with a slow start. And pray for TD’s flippers.

Score Prediction: 28-17 Dolphins

Season Record (Taylor Picks): 7-2

Next Game: @ NY Jets

* = See Glossary

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