What already looked like a mismatch on Thursday Night Football to kick off Week 10 from the AFC West between the last-place Raiders (2-6) and first-place Broncos (7-2) looks even more one-sided after Las Vegas dealt away one of its better offensive players ahead of Tuesday's trade deadline. Denver is -9.5 with a total of 42.5 for the 8:15 ET kick on Prime Video to conclude the season series, and despite it being early November in the Mile High City, weather should not factor.
Las Vegas is going nowhere fast and clearly needs to find its long-term future at quarterback in the offseason because Geno Smith sure isn't it, so there was no reason so keep unhappy No. 1 receiver Jakobi Meyers past the trade deadline. The pending free agent had requested a trade months ago and was shipped to Jacksonville on Tuesday for fourth- and sixth-round picks in next year's draft. Not a bad haul as Meyers had only 33 catches for 52 yards and zero TDs in 2025 after a career 2024 season where he caught 87 passes for a career-best 1,027 yards and four touchdowns.
Denver didn't make a major trade by Tuesday's deadline, but the Broncos can simply count Patrick Surtain Jr. as an addition when the 2024 Defensive Player of the Year returns at some point this month from injured reserve. He missed Sunday's game in Houston, and C.J. Stroud was faring reasonably well against that short-handed Broncos secondary before leaving with a concussion. I'm not sure Denver wins that game if Stroud says healthy because backup Davis Mills is such a downgrade.
But the Broncos control their destiny to win the AFC West for the first time since 2015 and have a path to the AFC's top seed as well, although they lose a head-to-head tiebreaker with the Colts. For the division, Denver is a +110 favorite, and for the top seed, it is +450. The SportsLine Projection Model forecasts the team for the second-most wins in the AFC at 11.9 (behind Buffalo's 12.0), a 54.0% chance at the division and 93.5% for the playoffs. There's not much of a bump with an assumed win here: 56.8% for the AFC West and 95.0% for the playoffs.
We'll take you through every aspect of the Raiders vs. Broncos game that you need to know before you lock in your bets, including SportsLine expert picks, props, trends, DFS, injury information and everything else that will help you know which plays are worth making for the primetime matchup.
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