The Numbers That Give the Raiders Hope Against the 49ers

A FIX FOR THE RAIDERS’ RUN D?

In case you missed Wednesday's show, Ryan Hoag and I dove into one of the Raiders' biggest problems: a run defense that's allowing a league-worst 5.1 yards per carry. With Christian McCaffrey and the 49ers up next, we break down one adjustment Rob Leonard could make to help stop the bleeding and why it could be critical against San Francisco. Plus, we look at how Kirk Cousins and Klint Kubiak can attack the 49ers' defense, the fascinating matchup between Brock Bowers and Fred Warner, and why Sunday's game could turn into a shootout. If you want to know what the Raiders need to fix and where they might have an edge against San Francisco, check out the full episode linked above!

WHAT TO WATCH IN THE BAY AREA

The Raiders enter Sunday’s game against the 49ers as 9½-point dogs. That’s actually tied for the largest spread of the week. That shouldn’t be all that surprising. The Niners are one of the best teams in the league, especially on offense, and the Raiders’ defense has not been great at stopping teams. They’ve been able to hang around with teams like the 49ers because they were able to put up points on their defense, but San Fran is actually tied for sixth in the league in scoring defense, allowing just 19.9 points per game. So it isn’t going to be easy against this group this weekend. But there are some things that bode well for the Raiders in terms of what the Niners have been doing on defense.

First and foremost, San Fran runs a lot of single-high safety looks. They actually run single-high safety sets at the sixth-highest rate in the league (59.4%), and they’re allowing just 6.4 yards per attempt when they’re in single-high, which is good for the seventh-fewest in the NFL. But Kirk Cousins has fared really well against single-high looks. He actually averages 9.2 yards per pass attempt against single-high, which is the third-most among qualified passers.

But there’s more to it than that for me. We’ve talked a bunch about where the Raiders have struggled because of their lack of talent in the receiving corps outside of Brock Bowers, and how teams have been playing a decent amount of man against them. They’ve been struggling to create separation for the most part, and that’s included Brock at times, too.

Now, they had more success against the Jets when they were in man last week, but the book on the Raiders has been to play man coverage, shade inside to take away the in-breakers and bring the heat on third down.

But the Niners don’t play a ton of man. They actually run it at the 27th-lowest rate in the league, according to Sumer Sports. Instead, they’re in zone at the eighth-highest rate, running it 81% of the time. They may tweak that a bit against the Raiders, but teams don’t reinvent the wheel and get away from what works for them all that often, so I’d expect all that to stay mostly true against the Raiders this week.

And that’s good for the Raiders because their top two pass catchers have had more success against zone than they have against man, and it’s a pretty drastic difference for one of them.

We’ll start with Brock Bowers. Of his targets against zone coverage, 60% had a positive EPA versus 52% against man. Eight percent isn’t massive, but it’s not nothing.

But for Tre Tucker, it’s a huge difference. Of his targets against zone, 66.7% had a positive EPA versus just 33.3% against man, and all four of his touchdowns have come against zone coverage.

So I think there’s some opportunity for the Raiders to do some good things against this 49ers defense, given how much zone they play. And to me, that bodes well for them to keep it close as long as they play clean football.

The running game took a step forward last week, but you can’t trust that to show up, especially now that San Fran has DeForest Buckner back in the fold. But even if they can’t run it and they’ve gotta drop back against this defense, as long as they can keep Kirk clean, they’ll have their opportunities to score and keep pace with the 49ers offense, which will likely have a lot of success against the Raiders’ defense.

As far as the San Francisco offense goes, I think everybody knows that they’re really good at running the ball. We saw what the Jets, Rams, Bills and Chiefs did to the Raiders on the ground, and they’re all behind San Fran in rushing success rate.

In fact, the Niners are tops in the league in rushing success rate, and they do a lot of that work out of heavy personnel groupings. Ryan and I talked about that in our show on Wednesday and suggested the Raiders run more five-down, bear fronts to try and combat that.

We dug really deep into that, so I’m not going to do that here. But we also talked about how the Raiders have deployed five-man fronts, either by walking up a backer or playing a true five-down defensive line, at the 27th-lowest rate in the league.

As we mentioned in that show on Wednesday, I think they should give it a shot at a higher clip this week.

Yes, Kyle Shanahan is a hell of a play-caller on the other side, but they’re down their top five receivers since Deebo and Mike Evans likely won’t play, as John Lynch said this week.

And I know we’ve seen the Raiders struggle against beat-up wide receiving corps this season, too, so I get it if you’re tired of hearing that. But my take is to play the five-man fronts and take your chances with the likes of Demarcus Robinson, who’s playing for the first time since Week 2. Outside of him, they’ll face some combo of Jordan Watkins, Brandon Cooks, Jacob Cowing and potentially Christian Kirk.

Again, the Niners are really good, injuries or not, and they’re coming off a bad loss to the Falcons. They had a bye week to mull over that performance, which included a four-turnover day from their offense.

So I’ll keep it real with ya like I always do and say that I think they win this game. But all that stuff I laid out leads me to believe that the Raiders can hang with this team and potentially prove me wrong.

It just depends on what version of the Raiders shows up in their first trip back to the Bay since moving to Vegas.

All stats are Next Gen Stats unless otherwise noted.

REQUIRED READING

After Maxx Crosby’s trade to the Ravens fell through, there was, and continues to be, a ton of speculation about if and when he might be dealt again. The trade deadline is coming up next Tuesday, but as our buddy Sam Warren tells us, Maxx doesn’t want to go anywhere, and he seems to be bought in on what Kubiak and company are building in Las Vegas.

MISS ANYTHING?

Catch up on some of our recent stories:

THE KUBIAK EFFECT

We all know Klint Kubiak is a hell of an offensive mind, but this graph above really shows just how much of an impact he’s had on his quarterbacks. If you’re a Raiders fan this should make you VERY excited about Fernando Mendoza’s future with Kubiak at the helm.

FANSHOTZ FRIDAY

“FanShotz Friday”

By now, you have seen the phenomenal photos we’ve been using in many of our newsletters. They’re some of the best shots you’ll find of your favorite team, captured through the lens of our friend Arnie Bazemore of Fanshotz.com. Every Friday, we’ll feature Arnie’s favorite Raiders shot of the week that he captures at practice or on game day.

This week, we’re featuring a shot Arnie snagged of rookie Trey Zuhn back in Week 3 of the preseason, the last time the Raiders and 49ers shared the field. I thought Zuhn played pretty well in his first start and his only real action outside of some jumbo packages. Yes, it was against the Jets, and DeForest Buckner and the 49ers are a much different kind of challenge, but it was a good start for the rook. Now let’s see if he can continue that kind of play in back-to-back weeks. That kind of consistency would go a long way toward helping the Raiders’ running game kick things into gear and stop the turnstile at right guard.

Check out Arnie’s work at his site linked above and reach out if you’re interested in working with him. He’s a great guy and has been so supportive of me over the years when I was at NBC here in Vegas, and he’s come along for the ride with Silver & Black Sports Network, too.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Our Friday episode! Keep an eye out for it dropping later this afternoon. I’ll dive deeper into the matchups I’m watching and catch up with our guy Matt Perrault from Pushing the Odds for another edition of Raiders Rounders.

Catch ya next time,