NFL Week 1 Game Preview and Predictions: New England Patriots at Las Vegas Raiders

NFL Week 1 Game Preview and Predictions: New England Patriots at Las Vegas Raiders

Back here on HQ and last night’s taste of NFL action was spicy, but the main course is coming up Sunday on CBS. I have missed this graphic. A full slate of NFL action. We’ve got Steelers at Jets, Lions at Packers, and all the other good action in between. Excitement though is brewing over the debut of sixth overall pick from April’s draft. That is Ashen Genty. He is suiting up for the Raiders as they visit New England. will get his first taste of NFL action, but not our first taste of Genty, the fashionable man. He is gracing the cover of GQ ahead of his NFL debut. You know, the offseason’s long. He got some time. He is fast and fashionable. Look at that. Got some got the neutral going on with the nice car. He wasn’t just serving looks, though. He also offered up this fantastic quote. He said, quote, “I don’t really shy away from contact, and once I make my read, I get north and south quickly. If you’re in the way, that’s your fault.” Everybody doesn’t like that. I don’t know why I like it. Maybe I’m a little psychotic. They let me know every single day that I’m the guy. They’re counting on me to do some special things in this offense. Well, if that doesn’t get you fired up, I don’t know what will. How about these guys? Let’s welcome in Ryan Wilson and John Breach to talk about this upcoming matchup. Guys, what should we expect from Ashen Genty’s first NFL action? Ryan, you take this one. Hey, Emily, good to see you. Uh, shout out to Breach for wearing the exact same outfit as Ashen Genty on the coverage GQ. So, that’s a great development I didn’t see coming. Uh, and they’re similar in a lot of ways and that they’re undersized and they they play with a lot of fire. So, I think the great thing about Ashton Genty, I got to get all my shots in brief before he gets a chance to talk, Emily, is that this run game was so completely terrible a year ago. They were last in the NFL and rushing and that’s why they overhauled everything uh from soup to nuts when it came to the offensive side of the football. Ashen Genty sixth overall pick. He is going to jumpst start this offense. That’s also why they got Chip Kelly, the offensive coordinator who was previously coached in the NFL, was Ohio State OC last year when they won that national title. Guess what Chip Kelly likes to do? Run the football. Gino Smith is back reunited with Pete Carol. And while he is a veteran quarterback and probably a top 12 quarterback in terms of the way he’s played over the last three or four or five seasons, he can’t do it all by himself. We saw what that looked like last year in Seattle. But if you give him a run game and the weapons they have and the young players on the outside in addition to Brock Bower, I think Ashton Jenty is going to turn around this offense, if not single-handedly, he’s going to have a lot to do with it because they’re going to have some balance, some much needed balance they didn’t have a year ago. Ryan, first let me say thank you. That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me that my shirt looks like is from the cover of GQ. Uh second, look, Ashen Jensy is the sixth overall pick. There are a lot of expectations when you are the sixth overall pick. If you’re a running back taken in the second round or the third round, well, they might rotate you in later in the season. No, that is not the case. Ashton Jenty is going to be the bellcow from day one. He is going to be getting the ball a lot. As Ryan said, Chip Kelly loves to run the ball. That’s how he gets his offense going. So, we are going to see a lot of Ashton Genty on Sunday against the Patriots. Now, the one thing to kind of watch here, and we just read that quote from GQ where he said, “Yeah, I love the contact. I love to run over people.” Well, that works in the Mountain West Conference. It’s going to be a little bit different in the NFL. So, I think that is one of the first things you look out for is does that running style, is that going to translate into the NFL or is he going to get into a situation where maybe he tries to avoid contact a little bit? Cuz you don’t want to get hit really hard on every single play. Even if you love contact, that’s how you shorten your career. So, it will be interesting to see how he develops as the season goes on, how much the Raiders use him. I do think it will be a lot and what this Raiders offense ends up looking like with Gino Smith, Chip Kelly, Ashen Genty all there. I will say those Mountain West defenders didn’t seem like they liked contact with Ashton Genty. You know, it’s funny, guys. I specifically asked our producer Noah if I should go to one of you first. He said, “No, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t realize that it gave the first talk, smack talk on this segment, but we’ll uh we’ll try to continue on.” Let’s talk about the other side, though. New Look Patriots team, lot of moves in free agency, new coaching staff. So, which Patriots edition makes the biggest week one impact, John? Well, I like that guy at the top of the list. I hope it’s him because he’s making more than $25 million a year. Uh, but the I think you give someone like Milton Williams that kind of money because Mike Frabel, Mike Frabel is a guy who wins with defense. We saw what he did in Tennessee. He rode his defense to an AFC Championship game in 2020. and Derrick Henry. He wrote his defense and Derrick Henry uh to the number one overall seed in 2021. So, I think his first order of business when he got to New England was we have to build this defense up. And that’s why you go out and you get Milton Williams and you get Harold Landry and Robert Splain and Carlton Davis. But definitely Milton Williams is the prize of that free agency signing period. And if he comes out and he plays well, he’s the guy that’s going to stuff Ashen Genty. He’s the guy that’s going to shut down the Raiders rushing attack. And I think Mike Frabel would love it if he came out and had a huge game for New England on Sunday. I love that breach. And Milton generated the highest pressure rate among all the defensive tackles last year. So that makes sense. But I’m going to go on the other side. Another veteran we saw on that list. Uh 31year-old Stefon Diggs who, you know, it feels easy to say, okay, this wide receiver is north of 30. He is not quite as dynamic as he once was. Stefan also suffered the ACL injury which provided a setback last year. But when you look at the GPS data, he was faster last year than he had been previously in his NFL career. So he still has that juice. And that’s exactly what Drake May is going to need because the one thing been a lot of things, but one of the biggest things that the Patriots offense has lacked outside of the franchise quarterback, which they now have in Drake, is an offensive playmaker on the outside. There have been no West Welkers or Randy Mosses or Rob Gronowsky’s embracing the field for years now. Stefan Diggs has an opportunity to do that. They drafted Kyle Williams in the third round. He’s going to have a chance to do that. They have Pop Douglas. So, this could be a a turning point in a Patriots team that has been pretty bad the last four or five years in a post Brady world. And they start to turn the corner once again. Yeah, Ryan, you said Drake May needs Stefon Diggs. He’s pretty happy about a lot of these additions, but where does he need to take a jump in his sophomore season? He just needs to keep doing what he did a year ago. And I think the great news for him is that they have Mike Vrabel in there, who I I think is going to turn this thing around quickly. And perhaps more importantly, they brought back Josh McDaniels. Uh Josh McGes and and the New England Patriots is like the high school couple that keep breaking up and keep getting back together. Look, you guys are meant to be together, just get married and get it over with because that’s where he’s had his most success. And I think he’s going to have an opportunity to do that with Drake May. He understands what it means to dial up plays for a young quarterback and get them in positions for success. And the other thing about Drake May, and I’ll be honest, guys, I thought that he probably should have sat more than he did last year. He exceeded everyone’s expectations, mine included. So he’s already have that he has that experience. He comes from a pedigree, a family full of winners that have won national titles, that have played high level sports. And that all translates to what we see here. I expect him to come out and just absolutely dominating early on and looking a lot like the quarterback that we thought he was going to be if everything came together when he came out of UNCC. And one thing about Drake May is that he looked like a potential franchise quarterback last season. And even though the Patriots really didn’t have any receiving weapons, he didn’t have a lot of help. We’re talking about a team whose top receiver was a tight end. Uh, no one on the roster finished with more than 700 receiving yards. No wide receiver finished with more than 625 yards. So, you didn’t have that number one receiver kind of that allpro caliber guy that Drake May could trust. And that’s also where Stefon Diggs comes in because now Drake May has someone he can target and look to when he’s in trouble or that kind of security blank that quarterbacks always love to have. And Ryan hit the nail on the head with Josh McDaniels. Do you have a guy who sure he has fizzled out as a head coach a couple of times, but you make him an offensive coordinator and he is always a top five guy in the league. He is a great play caller. He knows how to use the quarterback he has. You have a Tom Brady with 19 years of experience. Well, you let Tom Brady do everything. You have a younger quarterback where you need to hold their hand a little bit. He can do that and ensure that they’ll be successful. So, I have high hopes for Drake May this year, especially with McDaniels as his offensive coordinator. So, you both gushed about the coaching staff on the Patriot side of things. We got a brand new one on the other side of things. Pete Carol now leading the Raiders, obviously very familiar with this road trip, having been the Patriots head coach in the late 90s. Uh, so what do we think of this reunion of sorts, John? Well, first it blows my mind that Pete Carol turned 74 years old on September 15th in 10 days, which doesn’t even seem possible. He looks like he’s not a day over 55. I I think this is really interesting. You have Pete Carol going to Vegas. He clearly still has a lot of energy cuz you do not take a head coaching job with a team that’s kind of rebuilding unless you have that kind of energy. But you look at what he’s done in his career. He went to Seattle, took over a team that wasn’t very good in 2009 and had them in the playoffs almost immediately. So he is very good at turning around franchises. He went to the you see the Patriots. He was with them for three seasons. He went to the playoffs in two of those three seasons before they fired him. So, he is definitely going to have some incentive to go out there and beat them on Sunday. And oh yeah, the Patriots also handed him possibly the worst Super Bowl loss of all time back in Super Bowl 49 when the Patriots beat the Seahawks. So, Pete Carol definitely is going to want to win this game for a couple personal reasons, but obviously also because it is his first game as the Raiders head coach. And you look at what he does. He’s going to win with defense. He likes to run the ball. So if the Raiders can accomplish those two things, they can win this game in Pete Carol style. You know what’s crazy, guys, is that he’s a year older than Bill Bich. He was obviously fired after John mentioned going 27 and 21 for them to hire Bill Bich and he succeeded Bill Parcels. It almost feels like he was just wrong place, wrong time because as we look over the last 20 plus years and especially given how week one in the college football season went for Bill Bich. This is going to sound crazy, but are we going to have to re-evaluate whether Pete Carol was actually closer to Bill Bich in terms of being a great coach? He crushed it at USC. He crushed it at Seattle. Uh we’ll see what happens in Vegas, but the expectations are high. But it’s just crazy to me that he got fired after having two uh winning seasons and then going eight and eight in his final season in New England because they weren’t meeting expectations. And as we fast forward 20 plus years, yeah, the air was pointing up on Pete Carol, jury’s out on Bill Bichc, college football coach as we sit here. So just just something to think about. Uh and John, you missed an opportunity to make the joke that I went to high school with Pete Carol. So that that’s on you, buddy. Maybe next time. Uh Ryan, if you want to make that argument, this is the week to do it. as he mentioned coming off the debut of Bill Bich in college. Also worth mentioning that Pete Carroll is 3-0 against the Patriots in regular season games, but three- one of course if we include that Super Bowl, which I feel like we should. All right, who wins this game? Patriots a two and a half point favorite at home. Ryan, I’m going to go with the Patriots. I I’m just all in on what Drake May did in year one, as John mentioned, under some pretty trying circumstances. I love the idea of Mike Vrabel uh changing the culture, maybe reverting the culture back to what it once was in the heyday of the New England Patriots. I think Josh McDaniels is is going to be he’s exactly where he needs to be and he’s helping the quarterback that he needs to help. And I would not be surprised as long as we’re saying crazy things before week one if this team wins more games and they lose and find their way to the playoffs. Yeah, I agree with Wilson. It’s an interesting matchup because you have Mike Frael coaching his first game with New England. You have Pete Carroll coaching his first game with the Raiders. Both teams have plenty of question marks, but Gino Smith learning a new offense trying to figure out what Chip Kelly uh is doing there in Vegas. And I do think the Raiders will probably be better than most people think. But for this week one, they have to fly across the country playing that dreaded 10:00 a.m. Pacific time game on your body. Uh so I am going to take the Patriots in a close one. All right, guys. Thank you so much for that breakdown. Just looking forward to having NFL back on our screens on Sunday because yeah, we watched some action last night. We’ll have some tonight, but Sunday is where the NFL lives, also lives on CBS. Check out these great matchups coming up this Sunday. And we’ll get you ready to go for all the action. The NFL Today and NFL Today Plus live from Lambo Field. Coverage begins at 10 a.m. right here on CBS Sports HQ. So excited for the debut of NFL Today. Plus, hey, week one of college football absolutely delivered. So, what is in store for round two? Our Chip Patterson makes it easy with a viewer’s guide for the best games to watch on Saturday.

John Breech and Ryan Wilson join CBS Sports HQ to preview Patriots-Raiders in Week 1.

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