The Kansas City Chiefs(10-5) hope to improve their playoff standings as they take on the Oakland Raiders (7-8) this week. Oakland is coming off a 26-31 loss to the Indianapolis Colts but played the Chiefs much better the first time around than their 7-8 record indicates.
Defensively, Oakland matches up well with the Chiefs offense (previous article here). Offensively, the combination of the Raiders running attack and the improved play of Jason Campbell could give the Chiefs problems.
This week the Kansas City Chiefs Passing Attack Threat Alert has been set at: Elevated!
Most fans know that Oakland has a pretty good running attack. Fans also know that throughout the 2010 season Oakland has went back and forth between two quarterbacks. What most fans don't know is that Jason Campbell has been playing better the last three games.
Jason Campbell currently has a 83.9 quarterback rating for 2010 and over the past three games he has produced a quarterback rating of 95.3.
But we don't believe that the quarterback rating is the end all when evaluating a teams overall passing potency. So we also look at 5+ targets.
The 5+ targets stat, article explaining 5+ targets here, doesn't look very good for the Raiders for the year. But what about the last three games?
As you can see in the chart above, the Oakland Raiders have a 2.4 average when considering 5+ targets over the last 15 games. But upon close inspection of the last three games we can see that Jason Campbell has a 5+ target average of 3.3. That tells us a couple of things.
First, it tells us that Campbell is starting to see the field a little bit better than he did at the beginning of the year. It is expected that a new quarterback in a new system will struggle at first until he becomes comfortable with the plays and his receivers. This fact is also showing up in Jason's quarterback rating over the last three games (95.3) The second thing it might tell us is that the Oakland offensive coordinator might be opening up the playbook a little more as their new quarterback works his way deeper into the season.
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Jason Campbell Passer Rating: 83.9 12 TDs, 8 INTs |
When looking at the Oakland numbers over the 2010 season the Kansas City Threat Alert should be set at LOW. However, due to the fact that those 5+ stats include the play of two different quarterbacks and that Jason Campbell has been playing much better over the past three games...a revision might be needed.
Jason Campbell has a passer rating of 83.9 over 10 to 11 games this season and a 95.3 passer rating over the last three games. Just because I think that Jason Campbell is getting better...I am going to take the average and give the Raider's passer rating a level 4 on the scaled score below.
Jason has also had a 5+ receiver average of 3.3 over the past three games which puts Oakland on the 3rd level in the scaled score.
4+3=3...which is Elevated on the Passing Attack Threat Alert.
Of course my concern regarding Campbell's might be unwarranted and he could revert back to his 5+ target average of 0-1 he had in the first half of the season. But I doubt it.
Alert Recommendations: The knock on Campbell at the beginning of the season was that he could not spread the ball around as well as he could throw it deep: The last few weeks this has not been the case. However, for the Chiefs to win they need to make sure the Oakland running attack doesn't allow Jason the opportunity to throw the ball over the top of the secondary.