There are three weeks left in the regular season of the NFL and the first of those gets underway on Thursday night when two sides from the AFC West meet to open up a four day game week when the Las Vegas Raiders take on the Los Angeles Chargers.
The Raiders start the week clinging onto their hopes of making it to the postseason in their first campaign in Las Vegas while the Chargers know whatever happens over the next three weeks their year will be coming to an end after week 17.
Las Vegas Raiders
The Raiders go into the contest with a 7-6 record for the season which has actually seen them let a good position slip given that at one point they were 6-3 for the year. Three defeats in their last four have seen them drop back in the race for a wildcard spot in the AFC but two of those defeats were against pretty strong sides in Kansas City Chiefs and Indianapolis Colts. The Raiders are currently chasing the Miami Dolphins for the postseason spot and they host them next week so a win here would set them up very nicely for that.
The Raiders are not too difficult to figure out. Offensively they are decent, especially when they have Josh Jacobs available to give their attack the right balance. Where they need to improve, not just to make the postseason but to have any kind of meaningful run in it, is in their defence. All too often they end up getting swamped and in turn conceding a bucketload of points and that just isn’t a successful strategy long term.
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Los Angeles Chargers
There was absolutely nothing convincing about it but the Los Angeles Chargers ended a two game losing snap with a win over the Atlanta Falcons last week and while the victory will be welcome, even though it isn’t going to maintain any competitive element to their season, they are clearly going to need to offer up a lot more here than what they did there, where really some questionable decision making and play qualities should have cost them.
While the Chargers aren’t playing for anything from a team standpoint, there are a lot of people in this organisation who are going to be playing for their jobs and so if they can show they are still together and fighting for the coach against a division rival it might make the decision makers take notice. If they are going to win matches they have to hold their nerve better and in the key moments they need to find a way to defend better.
Betting
Recent matches between these two have tended to be high scoring and I don’t see that trend ending here. I’d rather back the over on the point line than I would take the Raiders because whenever they are in a tight match at this stage of the season I’m not sure I have faith in them holding onto an advantage of having the bottle to get the job done. This way at least we don’t need to fear any weird shenanigans late on in the battle costing us.
There were 57 points when these two met earlier in the season and in the last two weeks both these defences have coughed up 40+ points in a match so it isn’t asking the world for points to be scored in this one. In the main Raiders matches have turned into a shootout in recent times and with the Chargers not having a whole lot to play for there isn’t any reason why they can’t give the ball some air and have some fun. I like the over here.
Tips
WON – Back Over 51.5pts for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with William Hill
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