Oakland Raiders: 5 matchups to watch vs. Buffalo Bills
By John Buhler
Derek Carr vs. Jordan Poyer
Thursday night saw the return of Derek Carr. While he had played in six of the Raiders’ first seven games of the season, Thursday night was easily his best performance of the season. Raider Nation saw him light up the frustrated Chiefs defense en route to victory.
The guy that will be trying to pick off errant throws from Carr will be free safety Jordan Poyer. Poyer has been one of the handful of players that has really elevated his play in Leslie Frazier‘s defense. Frazier and McDermott are putting their defensive players in positions to succeed and Poyer is certainly doing so.
With the weather likely on the side of nasty in this game, it wouldn’t be shocking to see a few interceptions from either starting quarterback. Let’s just hope that Poyer doesn’t get Carr out of rhythm early in the passing game.
Of course, Carr will want to go deep on a few occasions in the passing game. When he can go vertical to guys like Amari Cooper or Seth Roberts, it really opens up the field for Carr to carve up defenses. Moving the sticks on the Buffalo defense will be hard, but Carr had no problem dicing up Kansas City last week.