Cowboys vs Raiders Picks – NFL Week 11 Monday Night Football with Kyle Kirms

Cowboys vs Raiders Picks – NFL Week 11 Monday Night Football with Kyle Kirms

Yo, what’s up? Welcome back to another episode of the SWAT. Finishing up week 11. We’re on the Monday Night Football. Cowboys Raiders in Las Vegas. I’m actually recording this before the Lions Eagles game, Sunday Night Football. But as of right now, having a I’m having a very good day. Uh, and I went 7-0 last week. This has been a hell of a run for me. So, hopefully this continues. Yeah, Monday Night Football. Let’s talk about it. I mean, is Cooper Russ two and a half points? I would hope Quinners put up a decent statline against Arizona State. If he didn’t, we have a real problem. You can say the same thing about Kraton. Okay, they have the one good game against Panthers at home. When Toast talks about the kicking market, it’s like some Earth is flesh. Andy, true or false, this is going to be a dog walking. Dog walking. This is my dog walking of the day. I think it’s going to be very ugly. I think this is going to be ugly. Hey, get this to us. All right, Dallas is on the road in Las Vegas. Uh, the Cowboys are definitely a team that really needed that by week. I mean, they’re coming off back-to-back losses. And honestly, not just back-to-back losses, back-to-back embarrassing losses. They got their ass beat by the Broncos back in week eight in Denver. Then they followed it up home game against the Cardinals. They were the better team. Arizona was the better team in that game. So, Dallas really badly needed that by week. Uh, hopefully they can turn things around here against the Raiders. And I think one of the main questions in this matchup is right here on this side of the ball. We’re talking about the Raiders offense against the Cowboys defense. Which of these two units is worse? Because we’re talking about two of the worst of their kind in the NFL this year. The Raiders offensively 29th in success rate, 31st in EPA per play. The Dallas defense 31st and 31st. So, who’s going to win these battles? Are the Raiders going to be able to move the ball, that terrible offense, or is the terrible Cowboys defense going to be able to generate some stops? What’s going to give right here in terms of the Raiders trying to run the football? In their last four games, when I say the Raiders run game has been non-existent, I’m underelling it. They’re averaging 2.7 yards per carry in their last four games. Success rate per rush under 27%. That’s terrible. This team has no run game whatsoever, but the Dallas defense can’t seem to stop anybody on the ground. In their last four games, they’re allowing 5.6 yards per carry, over 49% success rate per rush, over 164 rushing yards per game. So, what’s going to give here? Is the Raiders rushing attack that never works finally going to work? Or is the Cowboys run defense that never stops anybody on the ground finally going to generate some stops? Now, if you’re asking my personal opinion here, I think we have to give the edge to the Dallas defense. This Raiders offensive line, keep in mind, it’s one of the worst offensive lines in the NFL anyway. And now they’re missing two starters. Colton Miller’s been out. That’s not new. Jackson Powers Johnson joins them on the IR. Well, actually, I don’t know if he’s on the IR. He’s not playing in this game, though. So, two starters missing from this Raiders offensive line. And like I said, this is already one of the worst offensive lines in the NFL. When it comes to generating push, creating space in the run game, I don’t think there’s a single offensive line worse than the Raiders. They’re dead last adjusted line yards. And I know you might be thinking, “Well, Kyle, they’re playing the Cowboys defense, though. They can’t stop anybody on the ground.” And yes, based on what we’ve seen so far this year, that’d be true. But we got to keep in mind, I mean, we’re talking about a brand new Cowboys defense. The Cowboys defense we’re going to see in this game, completely different than the defense we just saw back in week nine before the by-week. We’ve added some new players here. Quinnon Williams, one of the best defensive linemen in the NFL. Logan Wilson, although Logan Wilson not exactly having the best year there. We’ve we’ve added a couple new pieces here on the Dallas defense. Also, Overshawn is back from injury. Now, he hasn’t played in forever, but that is one of the the Cowboys upand cominging rising defensive stars there. So, Overshawn’s back on this defense. Also, Donovan Wilson is back. I even think Malik Hooker has a chance of playing in this game. On this graphic, I have them listed as out. I thought I remembered reading that he had a chance of playing. Maybe I’m wrong. Uh, but the point I’m making is this Cowboys defense that looks so terrible before the by-week, there’s four new starters here and a couple of them are very talented. So, look, I’m not going to go as far to say, hey, this Cowboys defense is going to be good now. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this Cowboys defense is significantly better down the stretch. And against a Raiders offensive line that can’t generate any push to begin with, a Raiders offense that can’t run the ball at all, I think the Cowboys are going to be able to defend the run in this game. The Raiders can’t run the ball on anybody. I also think the Cowboys might be able to generate some pressure in this game. The Cowboys pass rush hasn’t been that bad. That’s not been the weak the the weakness of the Cowboys defense has not been the pass rush. So, I think they’re going to be able to generate some pressure in this game against that injured Raiders offensive line. And that obviously would be a problem for Gino Smith. I mean, this isn’t our first year watching Gino Smith play football. Not that he’s terrible, but handling pressure is certainly not his strength. So, I think the Cowboys are able to generate some pressure, which could throw Gino Smith off. Now, if you’re looking to play on the Raiders, you could say the last time we saw Gino Smith play a home game, week nine against Jacksonville, it was kind of a similar situation, a home game against a questionable secondary. The weakness of that Jags defense is the secondary. The Cowboys have a weak secondary as well. So, you could say, “Hey, the last time we saw Gino Smith play a home game against a weak secondary, he played pretty well.” and he did play well in that game, a 1179 passer rating. So, this definitely could be a game where Gino Smith is able to put up a decent statline. Here’s the thing. I personally think the Cowboys defense is going to play well in this game. And look, I’m not sure how much this plays a factor, but keep in mind, this is a defense that just lost a teammate, uh, Marshon Neland. I believe they’re kneeling for him before the game. a bunch of the players on the Cowboys defense have spoken about it. Uh how they’re they’re playing in his honor and he’d been there for a couple years, so he was pretty close friends with a lot of these guys. You know, when there’s emotion involved and coming off the by-week rested against an injured offensive line, I actually think we’re going to see the Cowboys defense look pretty disruptive here. Now, there’s nothing really on paper that indicates that, but I think we’re going to see the Cowboys defense best fast ball in this one. And I think the Cowboys are going to play a good defensive game. But again, there’s nothing really on paper that shows that. Kind of just think it’s a really emotional game for this defense. Now, when we flip it over to the other side of the ball, I like this matchup for the Cowboys offense. Not that the Raiders defense has been bad. This the Raiders have an okay defense. They’re 15th in success rate, 16th in EPA per play. Cowboys offensively, obviously, as I’m sure you know, one of the more efficient offenses in the NFL. Got to keep in mind this Cowboys offensive line completely healthy. They were missing pieces for a while there. Also, CD Lamb was dealing with an injury. Jaylen Tolbert was also injured. So, coming into this one, the Dallas offense is completely healthy. Uh, with the exception of Miles Sanders, who I think is out for the year. Now, the Raiders defense is in great shape. Also, they’re also completely healthy. I don’t think we should completely sleep on this Raiders defense. In fact, we should probably give them some credit. Their last two games, they put out solid defensive efforts. Not great. 46.8% success rate. isn’t exactly elite, but held their opponents to 20 points per game, 4.7 yards per play. Here’s the thing, Jacksonville and Denver, not that those are bad teams, but in terms of offensive firepower, neither of those two offenses really compare to a healthy Dallas Cowboys offense. And I personally haven’t lost much confidence in this Cowboys offense. I know the final scores of their last two games are a little shaky, just 20 and a half points per game in their last two. Certainly not what you want to see if you’re the Cowboys. your defense isn’t the best, you’re going to need to score more than 20 and a half points per game. But the efficiency numbers still look pretty solid in those two games. 5.8 yards per play, over 52% success rate. Remember, in the four games prior to that, they were absolutely lighting the scoreboard up. This is still one of the more I I would say probably a top five offense in the NFL, maybe top seven to 10, but I honestly they might be top five. Uh the Raiders have not generated a ton of pressure this year. 24th in press rate, 21st in time, the pressure. the Cowboys offensive line, especially when healthy, they’ve been elite in pass protection. So, we’re talking about Dak Prescott indoors. Remember, the stadium is indoors with clean pockets to throw from superstar wide receivers against a Raiders secondary that isn’t I mean, it’s not terrible. It’s not necessarily great. It’s tough to see the Cowboys offense not scoring points in this game. The strength of this Raiders defense is supposed to be stopping the run, but even that’s looked a little shaky recently. They’ve played some solid defense in their last couple games. But look at their numbers against the run in their last three games. Over 45% success rate per rush. Over 130 rushing yards allowed per game. So the Cowboys might even be able to run the ball a little bit with Javvante Williams in this one. So yeah, it’s tough to see the Cowboys offense not scoring points. One thing I forgot to add, and I’m not sure if this really means anything, but these two coaches are familiar with each other. Shottenheimer was P Carl’s OC at Seattle for three or four years probably I want to say like 2020 2021 somewhere in there. So these two coaches are familiar with each other. I’m not sure what what you do with that information. May I mean I would imagine they each have a pretty good idea what the other one’s trying to do. P Carroll is known for a guy is is known for being a guy that doesn’t change his ways. So Shotimer probably has a pretty good idea of what P Carol is going to do. That being said, everybody knows what P. Carol’s going to do because he’s he’s done the same thing forever. So, knowing what Prol’s going to do, I don’t know if that’s necessarily an advantage. I don’t know if this means anything. Just thought I would add it. So, yeah, I’m on the Dallas side of this one. I did take a minus3. I think I got it at minus 120. You could probably get something similar to that right now. I don’t necessarily love it. It’s Monday Night Football. Probably should have passed, but hey, I’m on the Cowboys minus three in this one. I actually think it stays under to be honest, but I’m not touching that. Uh yeah, give me Cowboys minus three in this one. Thanks for watching live shows at midnight Eastern time as always. If you’re able to make it, we’d love to see you in the comments. Let’s have ourselves another great week. Talk to you guys later.

Kyle Kirms shares his breakdown and picks for the Week 11 Monday Night Football game between the Dallas Cowboys and Las Vegas Raiders.

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