There are certainly reasons to believe that the Chargers and Raiders might struggle to score points on Sunday.
After a week off, let's get back into the Strengths & Weaknesses of the Los Angeles Chargers and their upcoming opponent, the Las Vegas Raiders. Starting with the strengths, of course.
Chargers strength: Pass defense
The Los Angeles Chargers pass defense has been pretty great all season long, especially when their pass rush is completely healthy, which it is in this game.
On the other side of the ledger, the Las Vegas Raiders passing game has been pretty terrible all season long. They rank amongst the very worst in terms of passing yards, passing TDs, interceptions and net yards-per-attempt. But they actually throw it a lot, because their run game is (somehow) even worse.
Expect Geno Smith to have a long and terrible day, getting hit constantly and throwing at least one back-breaking interception that the anemic Las Vegas offense won't be able to recover from.
Raiders strength: Run defense (?)
I tried very hard to find something that the Raiders do well.
Their run defense seems to be successful. They're 2nd in the league in yards-per-carry against them. That's pretty good! I'm unsure how much of that is the result of Adam Butler, who is questionable to play on Sunday with an illness, but let's assume he'll play or that there are other players with similar/more impact than him.
The Chargers are not exactly making life easy on themselves, deciding to give Omarion Hampton another week to recover before putting him back into NFL action, so we'll see if Kimani Vidal and the Chargers offensive line can find success where others have failed. At the very least, they'll have to be threatening enough to make the Raiders honor the play-action.
Chargers weakness: Scoring points
I know this sounds silly, and it is, but it's also a real problem.
The Chargers have been average at best on offense, which you can chalk up to missing offensive linemen (who aren't coming back) or you can lay at the feet of the coaching staff and players. The team is 14th in yards-per-play and 15th in the percentage of drives that end in a turnover.
They're slightly above average (8th) in the percentage of drives that end in points, which sounds good, but they're also 21st in total points scored and 20th in points per game. Their defense is good, but I don't think it's good enough for them to be a contender with a below average offense.
Raiders weakness: Field position
This is a weird one. Let me just start with the stats. Here is the average starting field position for...
- Chargers offense: 29.4 (25th)
- Chargers defense: 32.3 (27th)
- Raiders offense: 29.6 (21st)
- Raiders defense: 34.7 (32nd)
So, uhhhh, while this is a weakness of the Raiders.....it's probably also a weakness of the Chargers. If you were to ask me to explain these numbers, I would probably point you straight at the less-than-stellar running attack for both teams....but I could also convince myself that those two things are unreleated.
Either way, I think the Chargers can struggle against teams that can beat them in the field position game (the Jaguars are above average on both offense and defense, for example) and that doesn't appear to be a tool that the Raiders have in their bag.