Game Overview ::
By hilow >>
- Electric rookie RB De’Von Achane returned to a limited session Wednesday and Thursday after having his 21-day practice window opened. It remains to be seen if he’ll be activated for Week 11, but it’s currently looking like he will be active on Sunday.
- Dolphins RB Raheem Mostert was limited in both practices this week, which is notable, at bare minimum, considering the team is coming off its bye week.
- All Raiders players got in a limited session, at minimum, on Thursday, meaning they appear likely to be at full strength against the Dolphins.
How LAS VEGAS Will Try To Win ::
The Raiders have fallen to 25th in pass rate over expectation (PROE) with two straight games of extreme rush rates under interim head coach Antonio Pierce, during which time rookie starting quarterback Aidan O’Connell has attempted just 52 passes in total. That compares to the 64 combined team rush attempts over a two-game sample since Josh McDaniels’ dismissal. The Raiders have been one of the more run-funnel defenses in the league this season, which has allowed Pierce to keep the ball on the ground and shorten games recently. Expect more of the same moving forward, even in a matchup with a Dolphins team that should find some level of success in this spot.
After seeing 20 or more carries just twice in the team’s first eight games played, workhorse running back Josh Jacobs has seen 26 and 27 carries the last two weeks. That said, his once consistent pass-game usage has fallen off a cliff during that time, seeing just two total targets in the previous two contests. Even so, averaging 27.5 running back opportunities after a coaching change should be treated as more signal than noise as it comes with a true predictive factor (as opposed to a more descriptive statistic that would be more influenced by game-noisy inputs like game environment). All of that to say, Jacobs currently holds one of the most robust workloads of any back in the league. He is also coming off his first game all season with more than 100 yards on the ground as he continues to struggle through inefficiency, even behind an offensive line generating the fifth-highest yards-before-contact mark at 1.52 yards per carry. The matchup on the ground should be considered middling, at best, against a Dolphins defense holding opposing backs to 3.9 yards per carry behind just 1.24 yards allowed before contact. Ameer Abdullah should mix in for obvious passing down work, while customary change-of-pace option Zamir White has been utilized sparingly in recent weeks.
After double-digit targets in four of his first six games played, complementary wide receiver Jakobi Meyers has seen just seven targets over the previous two games while taking a distant back seat to alpha wide receiver Davante Adams. For comparison, Adams has seen 20 targets over those two games, with 13 his last time out. In fact, Adams has seen a target on 33 of O’Connell’s 91 pass attempts as the starter this season, good for an insane 36.3 percent target market share. Meyers has seen just 11 targets in O’Connell’s three starts, a paltry 12.1 percent target market share. Tight end Michael Mayer has become far more involved from the perspectives of snap rate and route-participation rate, seeing 88 percent or more of the offensive snaps in each of the previous three games but failing to eclipse a modest six targets in any game this year. In other words, this offense went from a highly concentrated unit amongst three players to a highly concentrated unit amongst one player, with everyone on the team outside of Adams highly unlikely to see more than five or six targets on a given week. With that likeliest scenario understood, it is at least worth mentioning that the Raiders have not experienced a negative game script while under the tutelage of Pierce, which could open up an opportunity for one of the secondary pieces to see an increase to their modest expectation.
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