Last time Cardinals were favored was season opener... until this week vs Raiders

Coming into the season, sportsbooks are as clueless as the rest of us on how each team is going to perform. They thought Sam Bradford would have the Cardinals competitive out the gates and therefore had them as 2-point favorites over Washington. The Cardinals were routed 24-6 in that game. They haven’t been favored in any game since. That is until this week.

Not only are the 2-8 Cardinals favored over 1-8 Raiders, they are heavily favored. They opened 3.5-point favorites and that margin has risen to 5.5-points since then courtesy of OddsShark.

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It’s rather shocking to see the Cardinals favored by so much against any team. Even a hapless Raiders squad.

If I had to guess, I’d say there are three things at play here:

Common opponent — Both of the Cardinals wins came vs the 49ers who blew out the Raiders 34-3 two weeks ago.

Recent point margin — The Raiders have lost 5 straight games by 14 points or more. They also haven’t scored a touchdown in the last nine quarters.

Decimated by injuries — This week the Raiders lost two of their top three wide receivers. This after having already traded Amari Cooper and placed Marshawn Lynch on IR.

That being said, a Cardinals writer gave three reasons the Raiders could win this one.