San Diego Chargers (0-0) at Oakland Raiders (0-0)

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I have the Raiders as one of my overrated teams. The Raiders’ Pythagorean Expectation last year suggested they should have won 6 games, not 8, as they went 7-2 in games decided by a touchdown or less, the most wins of that kind of any team last season. The Raiders also lost their top cornerback Stanford Routt and their top pass rusher Kamerion Wimbley in free agency. If that’s not enough, starting linebacker Aaron Curry could be out for the year and will be replaced in the starting lineup by a 4th round rookie and defensive tackles Tommy Kelly and Richard Seymour are both going into their age 33 seasons, with the latter already dealing with a bad knee. They had the league’s 29^th ranked scoring defense last year, allowing 27.1 points per game and could be the league’s worst scoring defense this year. Carson Palmer and the playmakers on offense can make some plays, but they’ll also commit a lot of turnovers and it won’t be enough to offset the defense’s play.

The idea behind identifying overrated and underrated teams was to be one step ahead of the odds makers and essentially blindly bet against the overrated teams and on the underrated teams until the odds makers caught up or the teams proved me wrong. However, I’m just not that comfortable betting on the Chargers here. They’re incredibly banged up offensively. They’ll be without top running back Ryan Matthews, leaving decrepit running back Ronnie Brown to start, in his age 31 season, after averaging 3.2 YPC last year.

They’re also without Vincent Brown, their best receiver in Training Camp before his injury, leaving Philip Rivers with the overpaid Robert Meachem, who has a career high 45 catches despite playing 4 years with Drew Brees, and Malcom Floyd, an inconsistent receiver in his age 31 season who has caught 3 or fewer passes in 14 of his last 23 games, missing 9 games over the past 2 years. Antonio Gates will be his favorite target, unless the 32 year old, who has also missed 9 games over the past 2 years, gets hurt.

Finally, they’ll be without left tackle Jared Gaither, leaving undrafted rookie Mike Harris to start on the blindside on a line already with major weaknesses at left guard and right tackle. Philip Rivers is an elite quarterback who should bounce back from a down year last year (he had 14 touchdowns to 6 interceptions in his final 8 games, a sign of a turnaround) and he’s done well with limited help in the past before, but this might just be asking too much of him.

There’s also the issue of the Chargers’ early season struggles, especially on the road. Prior to last year, when the Chargers went 4-1 early against a cupcake schedule, the Chargers were 14-12 from weeks 1-6 under Philip Rivers and 41-11 (41-11!!!) from weeks 6-17. Including last year, they’re actually 2-9 ATS on the road during the first 4 weeks of the season in the Philip Rivers era. The Raiders crowd will be amped up getting a Monday Night Football home game, a rarity for a franchise that has had a rough past decade or so (9 straight years without the playoffs).

All that being said, I’m taking the Chargers. I’m just not particularly confident about it. The Chargers were able to beat up on a cupcake schedule last year early, beating Minnesota by 7, Kansas City by 3, Miami by 10, and Denver (prebow) by 5. That’s not particularly impressive, but all the Chargers need to do is win here as small underdogs and I think they should be able to do that against an opponent who, like their early opponents last year, isn’t very good. Rather than putting 1 unit on the spread and 1 on the money line, I’m putting 2 on the money line because 1 point games are rare. It’s not worth the extra -15 juice to get the +1.

San Diego Chargers 31 Oakland Raiders 24 (+105) 2 units

Pick against spread: San Diego +1 (-110) 0 units

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