Las Vegas Raiders at Cincinnati Bengals betting tips and NFL predictions

Free American football tips, best bets and analysis for the Las Vegas Raiders at Cincinnati Bengals in the wild card round of the NFL playoffs.

Where to watch

Sky Sports Man Event & NFL, 9.30pm Saturday

Best bet

Cincinnati Bengals -4.5
3pts 4-5 general

Match preview

The Cincinnati Bengals entertain the Las Vegas Raiders in the first match of this season’s playoffs.

Las Vegas enter the postseason on the back of four straight wins, capped by a crazy game against the Los Angeles Chargers, in which they scored a field goal as the overtime clock expired to secure a wild card berth.

However, for a variety of reasons, the Raiders' playoff campaign may be extremely short-lived.

Hosts Cincinnati had been one of the league's boom or bust teams but in the past few weeks they appear to have really started putting it together.

A phenomenal performance against the Baltimore Ravens was followed by a huge win over the Kansas City Chiefs, and the Bengals look a fearless unit at present.

Quarterback Joe Burrow is playing incredible football, boasting an outrageous 971 passing yards and nine touchdowns in his past two games. Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins and Tyler Boyd are lighting it up as a three-headed monster at wide receiver, while running back Joe Mixon continues to do the hard yards on the ground.

The Raiders may have got hot at the end of the regular season, but each of their four victories was by four points or fewer and, bluntly put, it’s debatable whether they are of the standard required for the playoffs.

Las Vegas showed how flimsy they can be on defence last week when they let Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert constantly complete fourth-down passes.

They made the fewest interceptions in the regular season with just six, and are tied for allowing the ninth-most passing TDs this season.

The Bengals beat the Raiders 32-13 less than two months ago, and there is no reason to believe things should be any different this time around.

Take Cincinnati to give up just shy of five points on the spread and record their first playoff win since 1990.

The lowdown

Venue Paul Brown Stadium
Surface Artificial
Weather Cloudy, -2C
Vegas handicap Cincinnati Bengals -5.5
Vegas points line 49

Key stat

The Raiders made the fewest interceptions in the NFL this season.

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