The Oakland Raiders have been dealing with a handful of significant injuries and special teams has not escaped. Kicker Sebastian Janikowski sat out the Raiders week seven loss to Kansas City with a hamstring injury suffered in practice before the Chiefs game. Janikowski has not practiced the last couple days, but will reportedly try and test his injured hamstring either Friday or Saturday. If Janikowski has problems keeping the hamstring loose, the team has several kickers, including Dave Rayner, available on a moment's notice.

While Janikowski can have his ups and downs with accuracy, there is no kicker in the NFL with his level of accuracy on deep kicks. The Raiders know that if they can get to the opponent's 40 yard line, they are officially within Seabass' distance. And that is not just maybe if he gets luck distance. Few kickers can consistently nail 55+ yard field goals quite like Sebastian Janikowski.

At the same time, given the nature of hamstring injuries, if it is remotely tight, the wiser course of action is probably to shut him down for the weekend. If he blows it out and they lose him for several weeks or more, they are only hurting themselves.

For more on the Raiders, check out Silver & Black Pride.