Game Overview ::
By MIKE JOHNSON >>
- There is a huge rest disparity in this game with the Raiders coming off their Week 10 bye and the Dolphins playing on a short week after traveling cross country to play the Rams on Monday night.
- Las Vegas has announced it will be sticking with Gardner Minshew at QB, but Desmond Ridder waits in the wings after replacing Minshew in their last game and Aidan O’Connell is expected back in the next couple of weeks.
- Miami has averaged 23.3 points in the four complete games Tua played, while averaging 10 points per game in the five games that he missed or left early.
- The Raiders have allowed 31 points per game during their five-game losing streak, with four of their opponents setting their season high in points scored.
- This will be the first game for the Raiders under new offensive coordinator Scott Turner after Luke Getsy was fired following the Week 9 blowout loss to the Bengals.
HOW LAS VEGAS WILL TRY TO WIN ::
The Raiders are coming off their Week 10 bye and are searching for answers. Their offensive struggles this season should not be that surprising and you could even make the case that they have overachieved a bit. They fired Getsy, and while he was not great, there are much deeper issues than that. The Raiders almost certainly have a bottom-five QB situation in the NFL right now and they arguably have a bottom-five RB room as well. Brock Bowers is a great young tight end and Jakobi Meyers is a nice receiver, but if we were ranking WR1s across the NFL, he would definitely fall in the bottom 10 of that list. They are below average at the WR2 and WR3 spots as well and the offensive line hasn’t been great, either. The bottom line here is that the Raiders aren’t awful in any spot but they are below average almost everywhere offensively and their defense hasn’t been great either, which exaggerates their offensive shortcomings. The Raiders fired Getsy after an underwhelming first nine weeks of the season, but it is hard to get too excited about a rejuvenated offense with the reality of the personnel they are dealing with.
The Raiders are coming off a bye week, which is usually a time for reflection for struggling NFL teams. Considering the fact that head coach Antonio Pierce earned his job at the end of last season with some nice wins behind a ground-and-pound approach, it won’t be surprising if the Raiders’ offense works under that kind of directive this week against Miami’s defense, which ranks 25th in rushing defense DVOA. Zamir White was the workhorse for the Raiders during that stretch to end 2023, and while he has fallen behind Alexander Mattison on the depth chart this year, it won’t be surprising to see the Raiders work in more of a timeshare this week.
When the Raiders do turn to the air, we can expect Bowers and Meyers to be the clear focal points. Miami plays league-average rates of both man and zone coverage and notably was able to get a LOT of pressure on Matthew Stafford on Monday night. The Raiders will almost certainly work to get the ball out of Minshew’s hands quickly through the air and will look to drain the play clock and run the ball at a high rate for as long as they can. The Raiders held their opponents to 15 points per game during the last five games of the 2023 season and controlled tempo, shortening games. That will be the approach to this one for Las Vegas as well, it’s just a matter of whether or not they can actually execute that game plan and stick with it against an explosive Miami offense.
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