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It’s been a bad month for the Oakland Raiders, who saw their playoff hopes take another blow with a loss to the Chargers on Sunday, their fourth straight defeat after opening the season with a pair of impressive victories. They did get Derek Carr back in the lineup after missing one game with a bad back, but his return wasn’t enough to revive a struggling offense. It’s hard to say a game in mid-October is a must-win, but the Raiders will fall further behind the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC West if they don’t win their Thursday night Week 7 affair.
Watch this regular season Week 7 matchup live on Thursday, October 19, 2017, at 8:25 p.m. ET at Oakland Coliseum.
Opening NFL Odds at BookMaker.eu
Kansas City Chiefs -3
Oakland Raiders +3
Over/Under 47.5
Odds Analysis
The Chiefs opened as a 3-point road favorite but this line is likely to see plenty of movement before kickoff on Thursday. Kansas City is the best team in the conference, despite last week’s loss to Pittsburgh, and has played well against the Raiders, winning five straight in the series. They won both meetings last season with a stingy defense and the Raiders have shown no signs of breaking out of their offensive slumber.
Injury Report
Tyreek Hill – Potentially a big loss for the Chiefs, Hill has provided the offense with a much needed big-play threat. He took a hit late in the Steelers game and left the field to be evaluated for a concussion. Not only is Hill a threat running and catching the football in the structure of the offense, he adds a dimension on special teams with his punt return ability. He leads the team in receiving yards and has an 82-yard punt return touchdown this year.
Mitch Morse – Kansas City’s center has been sidelined with a foot injury and could miss another game as he continues to mend. Alex Smith and backup Zach Fulton misplayed a center snap at the beginning of last week’s game, resulting in a safety that put the Chiefs in an early hole they couldn’t climb out of. The run game also suffered with just 21 yards on 15 carries against the Steelers.
Player to Watch
Props to Derek Carr for getting back on the field a week after fracturing a bone in his back. But he certainly didn’t look comfortable and the offense continued to struggle in a loss to the Chargers. After putting up 71 points in their first two games, the Raiders managed just 10 in each of their next two with Carr being shelved in the second half of the latter contest. E.J. Manuel took over in Week 5 and Oakland put up 17 in a loss to Baltimore.
The Raiders limited Carr’s work downfield with 70 percent of his throws going five or fewer yards downfield. That’s completely uncharacteristic of the offense and leads us to believe Carr wasn’t ready to resume playing. We know he’s not completely healthy after suffering the type of injury he did and the short time between games isn’t going to help him recover in time to air it out against the Chiefs.
Free ATS Pick
Pittsburgh has proven to be Kansas City’s kryptonite the past several seasons, so Sunday’s result wasn’t all that surprising. The Chiefs can now concentrate on winning the division and that starts with Thursday’s matchup against the struggling Raiders.
Carr is bothered by his back injury and he failed to take shots downfield against the Chargers. The defense, meanwhile, continues to have problems on third-downs and LA converted several on their game-winning drive. The Raiders are in a bad spot with the pressure of facing a must-win game and that’s hard to take at this juncture of the season. Scoring points has been tough and the Chiefs have done a nice job at stopping teams, making the job that much more difficult for Oakland. This isn’t Pittsburgh and the Chiefs will get back to using Kareem Hunt in the run game to cover the spread while keeping the score below the total.
NFL Odds: Chiefs 24, Raiders 20
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