Las Vegas Raiders at Denver Broncos: 3 bold predictions in Week 17
By Nick Bailey
Raiders defense continues improvements
The Raiders defense has been awful, embarrassing, pitiful, or whichever adjectives you want to use to describe this unit, it has been that. Whether it has been an injury, COVID, player underperformance, or coach incompetence, the Raiders’ defense has been one of the worst in the league by far.
Just this past Saturday, they allowed the Miami Dolphins to come back and score a field goal with 19 seconds after starting the drive on their own 25-yard line. That’s almost impossible. I expect more improvements on Sunday, and by improvements, I don’t mean that they have played extremely well at all since Marinelli took over, but just the fact haven’t allowed 30 points scored in any of the two games coached by him is some sort of improvement so far.
The players have been playing harder, slightly more disciplined in the run game, and against the Dolphins, had the advantage of playing against a pretty bad quarterback and overall offense. Even much-maligned linebacker Cory Littleton had his best game of the season against the Dolphins.
Let’s hope the defense can at least match half of the production they had against the Broncos during their first matchup of the year. That would certainly be an improvement over what has been a nightmare of a season for that side of the ball.