NFL Betting Preview: San Diego Chargers at Oakland Raiders

Added on Oct 09, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

NFL

Big day of NFL betting action on Sunday and we’ll take a look at several key matchups. In this post we’ll head out west where the Oakland Raiders are hosting the San Diego Chargers. San Diego routed Arizona last weekend while the Raiders lost at home to Houston in Bruce Granowski’s debut at starting quarterback (for this season at least).

San Diego Chargers at Oakland Raiders
October 10, 2010 1:15 PM Pacific

This rivalry may not get the mainstream press of some of the others in the NFL, but these teams hate each other. Our initial position was to look at Oakland as a good sized home underdog–a stand buttressed by the large amount of ‘public’ money coming in on the Chargers. Ultimately, however, we have to go the other way. It’s just not a very good tactical matchup for the Raiders. It doesn’t take much analysis to figure out why–the Raiders just don’t have the offense to trade points with a high powered offense and San Diego is definitely capable of putting points on the board as they demonstrated at home last week. Bruce Gradkowski is a solid, hard working pro but he’s not in the same class as the Chargers’ Phillip Rivers. We’re also very concerned about Oakland’s ability to stop a tenacious San Diego pass rush led by Shaun Phillips who has six sacks to his credit already this season.

Some basic ‘pointspread math’ underscores the value of betting on the Chargers here. Last season when they played at Oakland they were a -10 road favorite. We sure can’t see a 4 point swing toward the Raiders since then. Oakland’s secondary is nothing special and that should give Rivers–already averaging 332 yards per game–a good opportunity for a big day. And despite this being a rivalry, the Chargers have dominated in head to head play in recent years–and particularly in the games at Oakland. Chargers are on a 22-14 run in the series going 22-13-1 ATS. At Oakland, San Diego has won 12 of the last 18 SU and posted an impressive 14-4 ATS mark. Chargers should win easily and cover the pointspread.

Bet San Diego -6 over Oakland