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Game Overview

Week 14 for NFL betting fans kicks off on Thursday night, when the Denver Broncos will hit the road to take on the Oakland Raiders in the Black Hole.

The Broncos have already won the AFC West title, and now, they are going to try to move up the ladder in the AFC playoffs. They’re two games off of the pace of the Houston Texans and level with the Baltimore Ravens and New England Patriots. Two of these teams are going to have to play the first weekend of the postseason and likely have to go on the road in the second week to visit the other. QB Peyton Manning is tearing it up this year, as he is eighth in the league in passing with 3,502 yards. He also has 29 TDs, which is second in the league and tops in the conference. RB Knowshon Moreno has taken over as the top back for the club with RB Willis McGahee out for at least the rest of the regular season. Moreno has toted the rock 20 times in each of the last two games, and he has 154 yards to show for his work. Keep a close watch on WR Demaryius Thomas as well, as he has 69 catches, 1,114 yards, and eight scores this year, and he is coming off of a two-touchdown game in the win against the Denver Buccaneers.

The Raiders are really running on fumes right now, and they enter this week having lost five games in a row both from an SU and an ATS perspective. They have allowed the most points in the league this year, and though they only conceded 20 points to the Cleveland Browns last week, the did let the much embattled QB Brandon Weeden throw for 364 yards. RB Darren McFadden has missed the last four games with an ankle sprain, but he is expected to be back in the lineup this week. He has rushed for 455 yards and two TDs on the campaign, but without him out there, RB Marcel Reece and RB Jeremy Stewart have had to carry the load. That has put all sorts of pressure on QB Carson Palmer, who has put the ball in the air a whopping 503 times on the season. He’s on pace to have 671 throws by the end of the campaign. Palmer has 3,532 yards and 20 TDs, but aside from fantasy football, he hasn’t had much else in the way of use.

Prediction

It’s tough to win a divisional rivalry game on the road by double digits, and that’s what the oddsmakers are asking the Broncos to do. They’ll win the game for sure, but winning it by this much with so many different ways to cover is just too hard of a task to assume will happen more than half the time. Denver 28 – Oakland 21