The Raiders and Chargers are just two days away from facing off in the regular season opener, and the gameplans are expected to be similar for both teams.
Antonio Pierce and Jim Harbaugh are head coaches with mirroring philosophies, and both teams are expected to lean heavily on their respective running games.
That being the case, there looks to be a little history working against the Raiders if Sunday’s game is going to be determined by the running backs.
Raiders’ insider Vic Tafur brought up an interesting statistic this week on the matchup between Raiders defensive coordinator Patrick Graham and Chargers offensive coordinator Greg Roman.
In short, Roman has run all over Graham’s defenses in two previous matchups.
“Patrick Graham mentioned today how he’s 0-2 against Greg Roman… I looked it up [and] I think the two losses were when Graham was on the Dolphins, they lost 59-10 to the Ravens. They ran for 265 yards in that game,” Tafur said on the Just Win Podcast.
“The next year in 2020, Graham was the Giants. They lost 27-13 to the Ravens and the Ravens ran for 245 yards that day. I think both Gus Edwards and J.K. Dobbins, who are now on the Chargers, combined for 160 [rushing] yards on 25 attempts. So clearly the formula for Greg Roman going against Patrick Graham [will be] to run the ball down his throat so that will be the plan, I’m sure, this weekend.”
Preseason doesn’t mean a lot in the NFL, but it was notable that the Raiders didn’t defend the run well in their first two preseason games. Hopefully that isn’t a trend that continues, and hopefully Graham’s most recent efforts against Roman aren’t a sign of things to come on Sunday.
As far as the Raider running game is concerned, it’s going to be interesting to see how Zamir White responds to the opportunity the team is giving him. For all the talk about the Raiders rotating running backs, it’s no secret that the coaching staff would like to get him 20+ carries per game.
Will “Zeus” be up to the task for a full 17-game regular season?
x: raidersbeat
Different personal you idiot Vic tafur, please stop posting nonsense,is that all this mindless publication can do????????
Using Grahams defense from a different team isn’t much of an indicator of what will happen without taking the players into account.