The last match in the NFL 2021 regular season comes along in the Sunday Night Football where the Las Vegas Raiders host the Los Angeles Chargers in a massive match in the AFC West to round off Week 18 of the campaign.
The playoffs don’t begin until next week but knockout football comes early here as the winner of this match will extend their season and claim a wildcard spot in the AFC. The loser will be watching the playoffs from their sofas so this is huge.
Las Vegas Raiders
The Las Vegas Raiders looked like their season was falling into oblivion a few weeks ago but to their credit they have won three on the bounce to set up this win or bust showdown. They haven’t just won their last three matches. They have done it under the pressure of not being able to afford a defeat and that is likely to give them a lot of confidence to take into this match with them. It is easier to play knockout ball when you’ve been doing it for a while.
The Raiders have suddenly come alive on defence in those matches, although the Indianapolis Colts aside they haven’t really faced anything that you would call a competent offense. They do here though so the Raiders are going to need their defence to stand up and be counted. They’ll need their offense spot on as well because you would imagine this will be a close encounter and offenses will need to deliver under the boom or bust pressure.
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Los Angeles Chargers
Throughout the majority of this campaign the Los Angeles Chargers have been a playoff team in waiting but each time they have had the chance to kick on and secure their spot they have floundered a little. I have mentioned a few times this season that they keep on getting embroiled in these shootouts in matches they shouldn’t get caught up in and if they lose here it will be that which denies them an extension to their campaign.
One of those losses came against the Houston Texans a couple of weeks ago and that was surrendering ground to the field. To the credit of the Chargers, they bounced back from that mess of a performance to beat the Denver Broncos and keep themselves alive last week but on the road to a divisional rival they are going to need their best on both sides of the ball. We’ll find out just how elite Justin Herbert is here you suspect.
Betting
The consensus is that this will be a tight match. I agree with that but there is a similar consensus that it will be low scoring but I don’t see that being the case. I get the argument that the Raiders defence has stepped up to the mark recently but they have only faced the Indianapolis Colts in that run and while the Colts are a decent offense, it relies a lot on one man. That isn’t the case with this Los Angeles Chargers which makes me think we’ll get a few points here.
You can get 4/5 on over 47 in this match and I think that is a huge runner. There was only 42 points in the reverse meeting between these two but that came along when the Raiders had all their off field issues. Prior to that, three of the last four were high enough scoring to have covered the over here and the win or bust nature of this game, if we ignore the conspiracy theory that they’ll agree a tie, means that teams will have to take risks to score. That might even bring defensive scores into play. Whoever scores the points I like the over here.
Tips
WON – Back Over 47pts for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with Coral
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