The Las Vegas Raiders are still undefeated in AFC West play, which speaks a lot since they have already played the defending Super Bowl champions, Kansas City Chiefs. Will the Chiefs continue to dominate their division-mates, as they take on the Denver Broncos in Week 10? Or will the Broncos trip Derek Carr and company up?
Once again, the Broncos failed to win consecutively, as they followed up their victory over the Los Angeles Chargers at home with a 34-27 road loss to the Atlanta Falcons last Sunday. But the Broncos’ offense has been producing of late at the very least, particularly on those two games mentioned. Drew Lock generated 313 passing yards and two touchdowns with an interception while completing 25 of 48 passes against the Falcons. He also paced the Broncos on the ground with 47 rushing yards and a touchdown on seven carries. With an emerging WR1 in the form of rookie Jerry Jeudy, the Broncos will always have that downfield threat capable of making huge plays. Jeudy had 125 receiving yards and a touchdown on just seven receptions in the loss to Atlanta. Lock and Jeudy can continue making positive plays in the passing attack against Las Vegas’ porous defense that is just 22nd in Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) and only 26th in the NFL against the pass, with 267.1 passing yards allowed per game.
The Broncos are 7-3 against the spread in their last 10 games away from home.
The Raiders are 3-1 in their last four games after defeating the Chargers on the road last Sunday, 31-26. That came on the heels of a 16-6 win over the Cleveland Browns, also away from Las Vegas. Both the Chargers and the Browns are sub-20 DVOA teams, and the Raiders are about to face an even worse defense this coming weekend, as the Broncos are just 29th in the NFL through nine weeks of the season. Denver’s a team that’s having problems with consistency on offense, as well, largely because of its inability to take care of the ball. The Broncos are averaging 2.0 giveaways per game, which is third-highest in the league. Their turnover margin per game of -0.9 is also just 30th overall. Las Vegas will be happy to pounce on the seemingly inevitable errors of Denver. This is important for the Raiders because they aren’t good at forcing turnovers (31st with 0.6 takeaways per game) but are ninth-best with just 1.1 giveaways per contest.
The over is 3-0 in the Raiders’ last three home games.
