Raiders vs Bears game time open thread

It’s time for the Return of the Mack, which hopefully will not be as successful for Khalil Mack as the 1996 hit song by that title was for singer Mark Morrison. After all the hype of this week, it’s a relief to finally get to the actual game with it being the first time the Raiders will be playing Khalil Mack since the infamous trade to the Bears.

The Raiders are coming off of a huge road win against the Indianapolis Colts last week to take on the Chicago Bears in London at Tottenham Stadium. It’s a brand new state of the art stadium that just opened this past April to be the home of the Tottenham Hotspur FC.

This is the first NFL game being held there of a 10 year contract that will have a minimum of 2 NFL games each year played there. With the stadium being specifically designed to also hold NFL games at least we know it won’t be a repeat of the Raiders preseason international monstrosity in Winnipeg. It was somehow an even worse field there than playing on the baseball diamond in Oakland’s RingCentral Coliseum.

Derek Carr and the Raiders will need every bit of the energy they brought against the Colts against the Chicago Bears stout defense. They are one of the strongest defenses in the NFL even without Khalil Mack so it is going to take a master effort on offense to come out with the win in this one. Expect a heavy dose of RB Josh Jacobs, though hopefully it will also feature some creative play-calling like maybe passing on 1st down once in a while.

Chicago themselves are 3-1 on the season and are coming off a big win for them against the divisional rival Minnesota Vikings, but the win came at a cost with their starting QB Mitch Trubisky hurting his shoulder and being ruled out for this game. They have a very capable backup QB in veteran Chase Daniel though (and some would argue Trubisky isn’t that good anyway) so there is not expected to be a huge drop off in play at the position.

Chat right here in our open game thread as always while this crucial game plays out for the Oakland Raiders. They have a bye week next week so the chance to go into their break with a winning record (and overcoming Khalil Mack in the process) would be tremendous for their season.