Arizona Cardinals (4-1) at Oakland Raiders (0-5)

The Cardinals are 4-1 and have one of the best records in football, but they’re a very flawed, fraudulent 4-1. The Cardinals are just +10 in point differential despite their record and they’ve needed to win the turnover battle by 8 just to do that. Winning the turnover battle consistently is very hard to do so that’s going to be tough to rely on going forward. Teams with a turnover margin of +4 in a week on average have the same turnover margin the next week as a team that had a turnover margin of -4 the previous week, a turnover margin of about +0.0.

Last week they won the turnover battle with Washington by 4 and it still took a late pick six for them to win by more than a field goal. In terms of rate of moving the chains, the Cardinals are moving them at a 70.27% rate, as opposed to 73.29% for their opponents, a differential of -3.02% that ranks 24^th in the NFL. None of this should be surprising considering how much the Cardinals have lost defensively since last season, losing Daryl Washington to suspension, Darnell Dockett, John Abraham, and Calais Campbell to injury, and Karlos Dansby to free agency. Meanwhile, Tyrann Mathieu has only played 86 snaps thus far this season coming off a torn ACL. He played a season high 50 snaps last week, but he clearly isn’t anywhere near 100%. Their record is hiding the fact that this team has a lot of issues.

Oakland isn’t good either, coming in at 31^st in terms of rate of moving the chains differential. They are moving the chains at a 68.42% rate, as opposed to 77.36% for their opponents, a differential of -8.94%. However, this line is still too high at 3.5. The Raiders actually showed some life last week, almost knocking off San Diego here in Oakland, in their first game under new head coach Tony Sparano. That should carry over into this week as teams that are 0-5 or worse are 43-20 ATS since 1989 as underdogs off of a loss of 1-8 points.

The Raiders almost knocked off a 1-loss team last week and I like their chances of actually finishing the job here against a significantly inferior 1-loss team, or at the very least covering the spread. It’s not a big play on Oakland because I don’t really trust them and they have another tough game in Cleveland next week. Teams are 96-120 ATS since 2002 as non-divisional home underdogs before being non-divisional road underdogs. They should be the right side though.

Arizona Cardinals 24 Oakland Raiders 23

Pick against spread: Oakland +3.5

Confidence: Low

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