Denver Broncos vs. Las Vegas Raiders Preview & Prediction | PFF

Denver Broncos vs. Las Vegas Raiders Preview & Prediction | PFF

The PFF Plus holiday sale is going on right now. Use the promo code holiday30 to get yourself 30% off a PFF Plus subscription. That means that you get everything. The grades, the premium stats, all of the fantasy tools, all the betting tools, all the draft tools. It’s everything a football fan could want year round. Holiday 30. That’s what gets you 30% off that year-long PFF plus subscription at subscribe.pff.com. [Music] Broncos Raiders divisional matchup to the death. Okay, maybe not quite. Um, what are we talking about here in this game? These are two teams that are going the opposite directions this season. I didn’t think that, even though I had a lot of faith in the Broncos this season, I didn’t think the gap would be this wide between these two teams, but the last time they faced off Dalton, it was a tight one. Oh, don’t don’t remind me. That was that was probably the ugliest. That was the ugliest game of the year. That was wouldn’t Wasn’t the final score 10 to seven? Yes. That was probably the worst football game I’ve watched this season. That Don’t even Don’t even remind us of the first one. Don’t even chalk it up to Thursday Night Football being what it is. That was that I think that was the worst football game I watched all year. Just awful. Hey, this one’s this one’s in Las Vegas. Where you starting here? You starting with the Broncos or the Raiders? All right, I’m starting with the Broncos and their offense. And there’s, you know, it feels like all year we’ve spent, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about, okay, what the Broncos offense needs to really be complete. And a lot of times that was, you know, Bo Knicks being more consistent and trying to throw the ball downfield, this and that. Right now, I think what you’re seeing in the Broncos run game, and obviously I praise their offensive line on Sunday for the way that they blocked and their offensive line is fantastic. They I I didn’t think they would miss JK Dobbins at running back this much when it was announced he was out for the season. But when you look at the Broncos running backs the last couple weeks, this is mostly RJ Harvey. Three yards per carry, 56.8 rushing grade, 1.6 yards after contact per carry. That is easily dead last in the NFL over the last two, I should say, the last two games for the Broncos. I believe they had a by-week in between there. Only four missed tackles forced in the last two games for the running backs and two explosive runs. They really need if it’s RJ Harvey, if it’s Jal Mclofflin, if it’s Tyler Bedet, whoever it is going to be in this back field, they have to step up and take advantage of this really good blocking they get up front. This team needs balance. I know Bo Knicks has come through in a lot of big moments, but by the time the postseason comes around, I don’t think it’s a big concern in this game. I think Denver’s going to win this game. I have it 28-10. I know the first one was close, but I think they’re just a better team here and the Raiders can’t block a soul and the d the Broncos have this defensive line, right? But I think they need to use this game with the Raiders as the fifth worst having the fifth worst run defense grade in the league. Use this game to figure out what works in your running game for these backs because you will not get through all the way to a Super Bowl like you want to if you’re one-dimensional. It’s just not going to happen. You have to be able to run the football in January, possibly into February, right? got to find some balance now in this offense. And it looks like they’ve lost that a little bit with JK Dobbins. Again, I don’t think it’s the offensive line. There’s a lot of teams I can point to and go, “Hey, they can’t run because they can’t block people.” The Raiders are one of them, actually. Maybe the prime example of all of them. Denver right now needs these backs. They need RJ Harvey to step up and start producing at a clip that at least makes the run game average going into the postseason. I I think that this game is basically all about the Denver Broncos to be honest with you. And and I I I hate for this to sound lazy towards the uh Las Vegas Raiders, but they’re just bad. I mean, we we we talked about this on the great release show. This team has now become Max Crosby on defense and Brock Bowers on offense. And that’s it. That’s all it is. And it just that that’s that’s where this team is. I don’t think they’re competitive. I do not think they’re good. They were okay last week, but they were okay because they didn’t really even give themselves a chance to win the game. When Gino Smith’s average set the target is lower, like there have been a couple of games where it was like you 2.7, 4.5, 4.9. Last week it was 4.9. So, do his numbers look that bad? No. But we know you’re not going to win with that. They score 14 points. Ashen Genty hasn’t been as dynamic as they’ve wanted him to be. The offensive line isn’t very good. So, to me, it just it comes down to is Brock Bowers going to get more than 150 receiving yards in this game because if he’s not, I I don’t think the Raiders really have any chance outside of what we have seen from him. Obviously, the score starts 000. These guys are all professionals. Anybody has a chance to win any any game uh any week in the NFL. But when Gino has turned up the average depth of target to try to attack downfield, which is where he had success at times throughout his um tenure as a starter with the Seattle Seahawks, that opens up volatility and this year it has opened up turnover worthy plays. And if you dial down the average depth of target and you say, “Okay, whoa, let’s not push it as much. We don’t want to turn the ball over like we have been as of late.” You don’t even give your chance team a chance to win the game. So, if the Raiders win this game, shout out to them, but there’s not really anything that they have done yet this season that would tell you that they’re going to outside of the Broncos being a team that’s towed the line on a couple of their wins here where an extra turnover or maybe if you were playing a little bit better of a team in a certain week, you maybe get that loss. Like the Jets game obviously comes to mind. That Raiders game obviously comes to mind as well, but there have been a couple of those for the Broncos. But even with that being the case, I don’t think they lose this game. Broncos 24, Raiders 13. Yeah, I agree. I It feels like if the Raiders were going to catch this team slipping, it would have been the first time around. I I just say again, to me, the biggest factor in it more than anything and the Broncos, look, they still figure some things out on offense, but how in the world are the Raiders going to block this team? I know I feel like I say it every week, but Nick Bonito and Zack Allen and those guys up front, how that’s really and they couldn’t block him the first time. They scored seven points. I mean, it’s not like it’s not like their offense was moving the first time around. So, I think it’s going to be more of the same. I think the Bron the Broncos take better care of business on offense uh than they did the first

PFF’s Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema preview the matchup between The Denver Broncos and The Las Vegas Raiders.

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