The Raiders are on the road and favored over the defending Super Bowl Champions.
If you knew that would be true in Week 14 before this season began, you might well assume this was a matchup between a team on the path to defend their title and the upstart Raiders, who were in the playoffs last year, having a brilliant season. One could have conjectured that former college teammates Derek Carr and Davante Adams were delivering the same kind of magic that one-time National Champion teammates Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase provided the Cincinnati Bengals in leading them to the Super Bowl last season.
That is what you might think.
But you, and I, would be wrong.
The defending champions have three wins and nine losses with a point spread record nearly as bad, 3-8-1. The Raiders flash with Carr and Adams limped into their first professional season together with only two wins in their first nine games after starting oh and three.
So, we don’t have a game that features a pair of the league’s best teams with winning records, but rather a pair of struggling squads that both have a slim chance of returning to the postseason this year.
What happened?
In the Rams case, their problems were more predictable. When they mortgaged their future by sending multiple high draft picks and their young starting quarterback, Jared Goff, to the Detroit Lions before the 2021 season to acquire Matthew Stafford, the pressure was on to win a Super Bowl quick.
They did.
In Stafford’s first season with Los Angeles, he earned the franchise their first Super Bowl win while playing out of their Southern California home. While this was a wonderful accomplishment, it also took all the pressure they played with last season to win off the table. The result was a horrible season that lands them this week with Stafford probably shelved for the rest of the year with an injury, their leading receiver and Super Bowl Most Valuable Player, Cooper Kupp, wearing street clothes on game day and one of the most feared defensive players in the game, Aaron Donald, also sidelined with an injury.
As for the Raiders, their problems are less traceable. First-year head coach Josh McDaniels is serving his first campaign in Las Vegas with about as much success as he had as the Denver Broncos head coach, which got him fired after two seasons.
So, what do we have on tap for tonight?
We have a Rams team that is playing out the string even though they showed life last week in a game they almost won over the high flying Seattle Seahawks. This week, the Rams added Baker Mayfield to their roster, a move that will in all likelihood not be a factor tonight.
Why did the Rams have such a competitive game last week against the Seahawks?
It was driven not by the home team in that game, but rather the visitors. Seattle came into that contest off a loss and were a bet-on road favorite. A very bad situation for a team that is not elite. Secondly, Seattle’s won/loss record represents more wins than their talent should dictate this season. In other words, last week’s close game in Los Angeles was more pinned on the visitors than the home team.
The visitors will dictate tonight’s result too.
But, in this case, we have a Raiders team that has recovered from their horrible first couple months of the season and arrive at SoFi Stadium tonight riding a three game winning streak. Still, the Raiders wins this season, five, is a notch below what their talent should produce.
That equation will get a little more in line tonight while the Raiders pick up a fourth straight victory and by even more than the touchdown point spread.
Qoxhi Picks: Las Vegas Raiders (-7) over the Los Angeles Rams