Kelley L Cox-US Presswire
The San Diego Chargers defeated the Oakland Raiders on Monday Night Football by a final score of 22-14. This improved their record to 9-2 against the Raiders in their last 11 games in Oakland.
Darren McFadden missed nine games last season, but was fourth in the NFL with about 88 rushing yards per game. McFadden had 15 attempts, 32 yards and his longest rushing attempt resulted in a gain of eight yards on Monday.
In his career against San Diego, McFadden has 59 attempts, 217 yards and one touchdown in five games. McFadden also averages 3.7 yards per attempt against the Chargers compared to his career average of 4.7 yards per attempt.
Carson Palmer has had success against San Diego as a quarterback for Oakland and as a QB for the Cincinnati Bengals. In five games against San Diego before Monday’s game, Palmer completed 70 percent of his passes with 13 touchdowns and three interceptions.
Palmer also averaged about 348 yards per game on 33 pass attempts for an average of 10.5 yards per attempt. While Palmer completed about 70 percent of his passes on Monday for 298 yards, one touchdown and no interceptions, Palmer averaged 6.5 yards per attempt.
The 6.5 yards per attempt was tied for 22nd in the NFL for week one in 2012 while Tampa Bay Buccaneers QB Josh Freeman averaged 6.5 yards per attempt last season which ranked 25th out of 33 quarterbacks.
Palmer had a good game, but I am sure that San Diego’s defense will live with that as opposed to the way he owned them in previous games. San Diego also held Oakland to 4.7 yards per play which ranked 26th out of 32 teams in week one.
In 2011, 4.7 yards per attempt would have been ranked 30th in the NFL. San Diego allowed 5.8 yards per play last season and only seven teams were worse than them in this category. It will be interesting to see if San Diego can build on their week one success in 2012.
