Pats Cast Episode 3: Preview of Patriots vs. Raiders, Cam Newton Extension Discussion

The fearless leader of the Silver and Black will bring his hungry, young team up to Foxboro this weekend. (Photo: Dan Istitene/Getty Images)

After falling to the Seattle Seahawks, the New England Patriots will take on the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday.

In this episode, I provide a preview of the game, as well as some additional relevant thoughts.

Links to podcast via Anchor, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, RadioPublic and Spotify

The Raiders most recently knocked off the New Orleans Saints on Monday Night Football, but their roster took some significant blows this week – not listed here is guard Richie Incognito, who has been placed on IR this week.

If Jacobs and Waller are able to play, the Raiders offense is solid, and tough to match up with. But if the two of them don't play, Gruden's offense will struggle to get its feet off the ground.

The Patriots have a fairly comparable injury list, although the wide receivers were also questionable last week and will most likely play.

All speculation aside, neither team is perfectly healthy, but neither of them have catastrophic injuries.

I also laid out the potential value of an extension for Cam Newton – three years for $90 million.

The first topic I discussed, which I've saved for last in this article, was coaching tendencies. Hopefully my analysis of Jon Gruden's offense and how it connects to other similar systems is helpful. If you're intrigued by that discussion, perhaps you'd also enjoy checking out my coaching tree spreadsheet.

A NOTE REGARDING THE SPREADSHEET: If a coaching staff is included on a sheet designated for another team, it's because the head coach of the secondary team was an assistant under the primary team's head coach at some point – you'll see a few of those for Bill Belichick and the Patriots. This indicates that those staffs are uniquely linked.

As we all know, the Patriots and Raiders will kick off at 1:00 p.m. ET on Sunday. It's tough to know exactly how each team will look when that happens, but hopefully this podcast offered some insight into some of the most likely scenarios.