Here's How The Raiders Can Upset A HOBBLED 49ers Roster...

Typically, when I do my win-loss before the season, I wait to do it after the schedules come out and after free agency and after practice and training camp and blah, blah, blah. People do it way too early, and I go, I'm going to wait because I'm going to really see what the teams are stacked up against each other, strength of schedule, I don't care, blah, blah, blah. And I usually do a pretty good job of figuring out the totals. Don't look at last year's. We'll just ignore that completely. But I get the games completely wrong. And I think this year is another example of that. I think I had us, correct me if I'm wrong, at 4-4 through 8 weeks. But I don't know if I've gotten a single game right. I think I predicted us to lose to the Chargers, beat the Patriots, beat the Chiefs, lose to the Jets. I'm all over the place. And now we're at a crossroads because now I have to predict the game here. I might be leaning a certain way, which means that it might be a good thing for the Raiders, but also that means I will have gotten the record wrong. We call that a paradox. So we're going to preview the whole game. We're going to talk about the injury report, but we're not going to let that fool us like it did against the Patriots. And then we're going to come to a conclusion, which you guys better be doing down in the comments below. What's your prediction for this game? Let me know. That's bars. Don't hate the player, hate the game. Let's get it. Just when I thought I was out, the Raiders pull me back in. A 38-point offensive showcase against the New York Jets. Jets aren't a great team, but coming up on the schedule is a great team. Maybe the most exciting game on the schedule because the former Oakland Raiders are heading to San Francisco. It's the Battle of the Bay. Now look. The 49ers are given an 80% chance to win this game on the Kalshi market. If you took the Raiders, you sprinkled 25 on there, you'd win $118.35. But I think the play here, the contract to purchase, is the 49ers not to cover. That nine and a half points that the market is being set at here because the Raiders have been the kings of the back door covering of the spread. So you have San Francisco 49ers to win by nine and a half. That's a lot of points. I think this is going to be a competitive game. So if you purchase the no contract and sprinkle 25 on there, it's $50.25. I think that's the responsible right purchasing of the contract in this game. Now look, if you're interested in checking out Kalshi, use code all the board to instantly get 25 when you trade 25. And what makes Kalshi different and unique from your typical sports book is that With that traditional sports book, you're betting against the house. That's not what's happening with Calshi. You are purchasing peer-to-peer, yes or no, contracts based off of the market that we set. You can do contracts for sports, politics, which is going on right now. It's election day. Movies, TV, entertainment, so much more. You want it? Calshi's got it. So if you're a new viewer and you don't know how this works, I haven't yet made my mind up about how I'm going to go in this game, what the score is going to be. I have my thoughts, then we gather the information, we talk out loud, and we come to a conclusion together here on, I guess these are podcasts, right? I never saw myself as a podcaster, but this feels like a 20-minute podcast, so on the podcast. This is a strange game because on paper, it feels pretty obvious. The 49ers have a good offense and a good defense. We're going to get into the numbers here in a little bit. The Raiders have a good offense and not a good defense. The 49ers are historically injured. We know this to be the case, but the issue for us is that doesn't ever seem to matter with the 49ers, and it didn't seem to matter with us when we played teams that were also injured, a la the Rams, a la the Patriots. The 49ers have a very strong home field advantage, but this is that Bay Area bash, which I just coined and made up on the spot because I'm so smart. And. That means that I do expect Raider Nation to come out in droves for this game, although it's probably going to be very hard for Raider fans to get into the stadium because 49er fans are, you know, their team's good. They don't sell their season tickets like we do, although now that we're being competitive this season, more Raider fans are showing up to more and more games, even in Vegas, which is huge. This game, to me, is a bad signal for us. Fans, for the rest of the season, I'm not saying that if we win this game, we make the playoffs. I'm not saying if we lose this game, then the season is over, because now it looks like we might have to play the Seattle Seahawks with a backup quarterback. The Denver Broncos have a backup quarterback starting for them. And then you've got the Cleveland Browns. So this isn't make or break, but it is a TSN turning point in the season. If you find a way to win this game, all of a sudden, people have to take you much more seriously. We're not going to get into the, oh, it was bad, Niners are good. No, no, no. We know the Niners are good. They just came off a weird game against the, who was it? The Atlanta Falcons. Shown that they were vulnerable. No longer winless. As I sit here and talk it through, nine and a half points seems like a lot. I'm not giving betting advice. I'm just saying it seems like a lot. And Kirk Cousins has been the king of the backdoor cover. All that to say... When you look at the offensive comparison, it's not that different. You know, it's a couple teams that score a lot of points, okay? Let me just remove some of this stuff. As you can see, I think we're good there. Okay, Las Vegas Raiders are 4-4. San Francisco 49ers are 6-1. Points per game, the 49ers are 4th or 6th. Total yards per game, even though we can't even run the ball. We are top 12 in the league. They are averaging 30 more yards per game because... Of the running game, passing yards became Brock, has been great. Kirk Cousins has also been great. Purdy, 1,748 yards, 15 touchdowns, 4 picks in 7 games. McCaffrey has almost 400 yards rushing and 8 touchdowns. Kirk Cousins has 2,124 passing yards, 19 touchdowns, 5 picks. Brock Bowers already passed 500 yards on the season. By the way, he missed the first two games. And we cannot run the ball. Now, we heard Clint Kubiak say... That it's going to be running back by committee until further notice, which is huge for us. Not only is it huge for us because it gives us a different look, a different pitch, go change up instead of fastball. It's also for a team in San Francisco that is incredibly well coached. It doesn't show all our cards. I don't expect. Mike Washington to have 25 carries and Ashton Gentry to have two carries. Clint Kubiak said what we did in that game had nothing to do with the comments that he made about the Jets. I don't know if I entirely believe him, but all that to say, I think it's going to be a little more even keel, a little more spread out. Ashton Gentry has proven to be an extremely valuable wide receiver in this offense. And this is going to be a game where if we are going to win this game, the offense has to be near perfect, which is essentially what they were last week. They scored every single time they were in the red zone. They had multiple touchdowns. They were able to run the ball consistently in the third quarter. If we lose the turnover battle, especially on offense, meaning we turn the ball over a couple of times on offense in a silly way where they don't make a play, we just, you know, A bad interception or a bad fumble on a muffed punt, we will lose this game. If our star players on offense do not have star performances, we will lose this game. Brock needs to be incredible. It's going to be tough because he's got a Fred Warner matchup. Ashton Gentry needs to continue to make an impact in the pass game. The offensive line needs to continue to protect, okay? That's the end of the discussion. Because when we flip over to the defense here, it's not great. Now, before we flip to the defense, I want to hear... From Mr. Robbie Leonard. Because we don't listen to him talk a lot. And we got a press conference here. So we're going to watch a little bit of a press conference from Robbie Leonard. It's not too, too long. But I want to hear what he has to say about how horrific this defense has been. And then we'll get into the defensive comparison. Obviously, you know, the entire game probably wasn't what you wanted Sunday. But the second half, you guys came up with stops. I guess, how do you kind of evaluate the whole thing? No, it wasn't pretty. You know, and there's a lot we have to fix. But, you know, I've been here a couple years. Not many times we come out finding a way to win. And I was proud of the resilience of getting hit in the mouth the first three plays. And we have a red area stop on the three-yard line. So there's a lot of points on the little things that helped us win that game and how they rallied in the fourth quarter. You know, it was really fun to see. Jamal McCoy got some extended rest when DP went down. How do you think he handled that situation? Good. Some ups and downs, but, you know, he's learning. He's very coachable, competitive. I will say this, right now, especially with the way the teams are health-wise, the 49ers have a more potent offense than the Rams. So if we have a game like the Rams game, where we just don't show up defensively in the first half, or like the Jets game, it could be worse than 28-6, or whatever it was at the halftime of the Jets. It could be worse than that. So we have to find a way to get stops on defense early in this football game to have a chance. I really like where he's at. You brought up the red area. I think they went two for six in the red zone. Just where did you see improvements in red zone defense? Just overall, you know, in all of it. To get him to a four-point play, a third down, and then to execute was nice. And that's all we're looking for is to see improvement in certain areas and trying to target them one at a time. And we did that, so I was happy. They targeted you, Eric, so it was quite a hit on Sunday. Was that something you guys were anticipating ahead of the game? How do you think you handled that? No, I think, no. I mean, you know, their game plan was their game plan. I don't know what their plan was. But, you know, I think the four-point plays, the ones he did make, that helped keep him to field goals. When you play in corner, I thought he handled himself really well. They had so much success running the ball. They kind of abandoned that in the second half. Is there something you did, not to take away the run, but to take away the looks that they might run into? We tried to adjust. Obviously, like I said, it was tough sledding. We need to be better, and we talked about some things. It's hard to come up with what their mindset was, but we tried to fix some things and adjust. Even with those adjustments, you know, how much... I haven't heard him talk a lot. I don't love what I'm hearing, so I'm going to move on. I don't love the tone. It feels a little flippant, which may be... That's just his personality. That's fine. But when you see these defensive numbers, you'd rather not be so flippant in my mind. Look, I believe in you, but this ain't great. This ain't great at all. 31st in points allowed per game, we've given up 30 in like 5 straight games, 30th in total yards per game, 25th in passing yards per game, 31st in rushing yards per game, I know we don't have the 85 Bears out there, but we don't have a bunch of scrubs, we've got some decent players, where'd it go, I lost it, hold on, there it is, allowed 30 plus points in 5 straight games, last in the NFL in yards per play allowed. Run defense, okay, and now we flip over, and this is why we're nine and a half point underdogs. I mean, this is just, the difference is stark. 20 points per game, six. 299 yards per game, fourth. Passing yards allowed, 210, 11. Rushing yards allowed, fifth at 89. Their run defense is fifth, 3.48 yards per carry, just 15 sacks and three interceptions. So their defense as a whole is pretty good, but they're not impacting the game with those big flashy plays. Those numbers just showed you Why, if we do win this game, people aren't going to then all of a sudden be like, well, the 49ers just stink. No, they are very good to great football team, if not the best football team in the National Football League, and you're playing them on the road. So like I said before on offense, defensively, your impact players have to have the biggest of impact. Max Crosby had a good game against the Jets. He's going to have to be even better in this game if we have a chance. We are going to have to have Nagobi Dean and Quay Walker showed what they were like in the first few weeks of the season. Eric Stokes cannot have the game he had last week, not even remotely close because again, we have no shot if we start out that sluggish because they could run the football better than any team that we've played so far that we've started out sluggish against. It seems like we've cured a little bit of the third quarter ailments against the Jets because we were able to run the ball more consistently with Mike Washington. But this, to me, is a pull-out-all-the-stops game. This is a, if you've got to fake a punt, fake a field goal, if you've got to go for it on a longer fourth down, you've got to find a way to steal a possession or two because if they give you the rock, you have to capitalize. To me... When you're playing a team like the Chiefs, I love going for it when you think you should go for it. Going for touchdowns instead of field goals. You want to go for two, go for two. Because you're playing with house money. Nobody thinks you can win. If you watch the NFL preview thing, 10 teams picked the 49ers, zero people picked the Raiders. And you can't argue with that. You can't argue with that. The only thing that we have as an advantage here is the injury report, which... You know, for the Raiders, it's a couple DTs who are limited. DP's probably not going to play. Ian Thomas was limited, who activated Carter Runyon, so we'll see. You get that to the 49ers, and it's their whole team. I mean, it's every good player they have. It's Trent Williams, who has a rest day, I believe. Deebo Samuel, Demarcus Robinson, Christian McCaffrey, Christian Kirk, Nate Hobbs, hello, Nate Hobbs, Mike Evans, Nick Bosa. It is everybody but Fred Warner and Brock Purdy. And it's like, did not participate. He's got ribs and Achilles. Christian McCaffrey did not participate. Deebo Samuel did not participate. Trent Williams was a rest day. I mean, the 49ers are running out of people, and it showed against the Atlanta Falcons. Now, the Rams were banged up, and the Patriots were banged up, and those were two teams that had their way with us. So do I think now these injuries mean more than the Rams? Or the Patriots' injuries. I think they do a little bit. I think the Falcons prove that. I think the Falcons prove that if Christian McCaffrey's not in the game, if Brock Purdy doesn't have his top three pass catchers, they can be had. I know it's ridiculous to say, but we're trying to scrap our way to five wins here. We haven't yet beaten a team that's above 500. That's just a fact. We're good against the bad teams. We're bad against the good teams. This is a narrative-changing game, just like last week was. You've got to go on the road, and you've got to beat the Jets for the first time with fans in the stands since the last time Geno Smith was the quarterback of that team. And you can't be sluggish. And they scored 38. Defense was bad, but they were okay in the second half, and you change the narrative of that game. This is another narrative-changing game. Can you win a game that nobody thinks you can win? Even the Chiefs game, even the Bills game, there were a handful of select people that thought we could win that game, and they both came down to the wire. The Chiefs game more than the Bills game. You're nine and a half point underdogs. Where are we leaning right now? To me, even though I said Kirk Cousins is the king of the backdoor cover, on paper, this feels like a 30 to 17, 30 to 21 type game. I guess I'll say 30 to 21 for the king of the backdoor cover, but I'm taking the Niners in this game. Now, that bodes well, because everybody I take, the opposite thing happens, even though I've had the record correct, which doesn't make any sense. But to me, the 49ers are clearly the better team. I know they're banged up, but that didn't matter against the Patriots. It didn't matter against the Rams. We didn't show any fight against the Patriots. We showed a lot of fight against the Rams. However, the smoking gun of this game could be the pseudo-division rival aspect of it. We're not in the same division. We're not in the same conference. But we are rivals, bitter rivals, especially if you grew up on the West Coast. And that magic in the air can produce some weird and funky outcomes. It reminds me of Christmas Day. Aiden O'Connell doesn't complete a pass, and we just dominated the Chiefs. Is that on the board? Yes. I do think there's a world where we win this game, but it's what I laid out. You have to win a turnover battle. You have to steal a possession. Your stars have to perform at a rapid pace, and your opponent has to feel the injuries that they've been dealing with all year. So I'm going to say 30 to 21-9ers. I don't love saying that, but... In a world where your offense has to be perfect, and you're away, and everybody's watching, it just feels like a tough uphill climb. But it's not one that's impossible, and I do think that we can be competitive in every game we play this year. It doesn't mean the season's over, because again, we've got probably Drew Locke next week and Bo Nix, two defenses that are awesome, two offenses that can't really function right now. So only time will tell. 49ers also coming off a bye. That doesn't help either. You know what does help? My $5 and $10 patrons and YouTube members. If you want to become one of these beautiful people, please click the big join button below or follow the link in the description of my Patreon. It helps out the channel tremendously. Hit that like button, comment away, and please be sure to subscribe. It's free. No charge to you. I love you guys. I'll see you next time.