Houston quarterback Matt Schuab will be going into Sunday\u2019s game against the Oakland Raiders (2-2) without star wide receiver Andre Johnson. This development is a real test for the Texans (3-1) who have been having a great season that\u2019s rested largely on Johnson\u2019s shoulders. <\/p>\n
Oakland vs Houston Johnson, who injured his hamstring in last week\u2019s 17-10 victory over the Steelers has been Schuab\u2019s go to guy for big yardage plays all the time, but especially against the Raiders. Already this year, Johnson has been targeted for 35 of Schuab\u2019s 110 pass attempts. That means there\u2019s going to be some major adjustments made to the Texans\u2019 game plans. <\/p>\n Fortunately, for Houston, they\u2019ve always had pretty good luck running the ball against Oakland. They\u2019ve averaged 153 yards on the ground in their past five meetings with the Raiders while winning four of those games. Still, the loss of a receiver as good as Johnson is bound to be noticed. That\u2019s why we\u2019ll probably see a fair amount of running from Arian Foster, who\u2019s just returned to the lineup after a hamstring injury and ran for over 100 yards and a touchdown last week against Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re going to rely on your ground game, the Raiders are the team you\u2019ll want to be playing. Their defense is currently ranked 29th against the run and gave up 400 running yards against both Buffalo and New England. When the two teams met last season, Houston ran up almost 250 yards against a big Oakland defense that just couldn\u2019t keep pace. Unless they can slow down the Texans running game, it could be a long afternoon for Oakland. [soliloquy id=”82219″]<\/p>\n Offensively, things look a little better for the Raiders. <\/p>\n Despite what the 31-19 loss against the Patriots would indicate, Raiders quarterback Jason Campbell actually had a pretty good game last week. As a team they put up almost 500 offensive yards in that outing, but were crippled by two critical Campbell interceptions that changed the course of the game. The good news is that those two picks were only the second and third ones he\u2019s thrown all season. If Campbell hopes to knock off the Texans, he\u2019d better hope that was one game aberration.<\/p>\n Oakland has looked a lot better this year than they have in seasons past and a lot of that success can be credited to new head coach and long time offensive coordinator Hue Jackson. Jackson seems adept at handling the dysfunction and general weirdness that always seems to surround the Raiders organization. <\/p>\n On the other side of the field, Texans\u2019 head coach Gary Kubiak is no stranger to the Raiders. After eleven seasons as offensive coordinator in Denver, he\u2019s an experienced Raider opponent who knows what to expect from the boys in black. <\/p>\n Provided they get their defensive act together, the Raiders have a good chance at shutting Houston down. But if they play like they have against other high powered offensive units, look for Texas to put up lots of yards on the ground and lots of points on the scoreboard.<\/p>\n Both the Raiders and the Texans are currently 3-1 ATS. <\/p>\n Matt’s Prediction: Houston 28-21<\/strong><\/p>\n Welcome to the CappersPicks.com Week 5 NFL football predictions! We KNOW you will find our FREE weekly NFL football picks<\/strong><\/a>, tips, betting advice, strategies, NFL Football gambling articles and more to help you become the best NFL football bettor on your block!!<\/p>\n The Raiders vs. Texans will both be trying to pick up a win on Sunday when they battle at Reliant Stadium in Houston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":41020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[17599,577,803,840,844,909,18019,17964],"class_list":["post-44353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl","tag-free-football-predictions","tag-houston","tag-nfl-betting-online","tag-nfl-odds","tag-nfl-picks","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-vs-houston","tag-raiders-vs-texans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44353"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44395,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44353\/revisions\/44395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nVenue\/Stadium: Reliant Stadium, Houston, Texas
\nTime\/Date: 1:00 PM ET, Sunday, October 9, 2011
\nNFL Odds From: 5 Dimes
\nSpread (ATS): Texans -8
\nOver\/Under: 48.5<\/strong><\/p>\nCLICK HERE TO VIEW OUR PREMIUM EXPERT SELECTIONS FOR ALL NFL WEEK 5 GAMES —–><\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"