Surprisingly, the player most affected by Houshmandzadeh's arrival was Darrius Heyward-Bey, who leads the team with 27 catches for 434 yards.
A game after he was targeted 11 times against Kansas City, Heyward-Bey was thrown to only once Sunday - and was hardly on the field as the Raiders used a lot of three-receiver sets with mixes of Jacoby Ford, Denarius Moore, Chaz Schilens and Houshmandzadeh.
Head coach Hue Jackson's explanation sounded a little fishy.
"That was just certain sets," Jackson said. "We have some very talented players, and he's one of them, and we had certain sets where we have a bunch of guys (we're) targeting for those particular sets because of comfortability."
This certainly came out of nowhere, as Heyward-Bey led the Raiders in targets the last four weeks. It seems there is likely more to the story, but Carson Palmer seems to be dictating that T.J. Houshmandzadeh gets on the field, and the Raiders seem intent on getting Denarius Moore and a now-healthy Jacoby Ford plenty of snaps. We'll keep an eye on the situation next week, but DHB will be an extremely risky start after this goose egg.
