The Chargers finished second in the AFC West in 2024, but an NFL.com analyst believes it’s the Broncos who will win the divisional crown this year over the Chiefs.
Like both the Raiders and the Broncos, the Chargers have spent the offseason making proactive and calculated moves to gain some form of ground and attempt to put an end to the Chiefs and their stranglehold on the division.
I don’t think it’s crazy to say that every team behind the Chiefs got better in some way, shape, or form in the past four months, but it remains to be seen which team exactly has propelled themselves the closest to Kansas City.
In a recent article from NFL.com’s Jeffri Chadiha, the analyst listed a number of very bold predictions for this upcoming season and one of those centered on a team finally upsetting Kansas City en route to taking the divisonal crown from them for the first time 2015.
However, to the dismay of everyone here, Chadiha did NOT pick the Chargers. In his expert opinion, it’s the Broncos that he believes are built best to win the AFC West crown in 2025.
“The Chiefs have reigned over the division since 2016 and they’ve barely been challenged during most of the years that quarterback Patrick Mahomes has been under center,” says Chadiha. “Most of that success comes down to the Chiefs’ greatness but they’ve also been helped plenty by the ineptitude of the teams sharing the AFC West with them. Kansas City has been led by future Hall of Fame coach Andy Reid during that entire run of dominance. Every other team in the division has had at least four different head coaches within that same stretch. That churn appears to have slowed, though, with Pete Carroll (Raiders), Jim Harbaugh (Chargers) and Sean Payton (Broncos) now working in the AFC West.”
We can only hope the immense amount of coaching talent in the division shakes things up, right? Several years ago it felt like every AFC West team was loaded with talent on both sides of the ball, but it actually ended up being another underwhelming year for everyone aside from Kansas City. Makes you think twice about buying the hype this year again.
In the end, it’s Payton’s pedigree as a Super Bowl-winning coach and his team’s elite defense that leads Chadiha to believe this is Denver’s time to shine for the first time since they went to Super Bowl 50.
“Of those three coaches — all of whom have either reached or won the Super Bowl — Payton is sitting on the most impressive team aside from the Chiefs. The Broncos have an elite defense, and it looks like they landed a franchise quarterback in Bo Nix in last year’s draft. We know Payton can coach up the offense, especially as the Broncos add more playmakers. We’ve also seen how Denver gave Kansas City fits last season in Arrowhead, with a blocked field goal keeping them from securing an impressive upset. Denver is good enough to win this division now. With the other teams also creating more resistance to the Chiefs — who went 5-1 in the AFC West after resting their starters in a Week 18 loss to the Broncos — Denver will earn its first crown since Peyton Manning was their quarterback.”
The Chargers have finished second in the division four times since the 2015 season and have finished third or fourth five times. Unfortunately, history tells us the Chargers are more than likely to be in the bottom half of the division than the runner-up and/or challenger to the Chiefs, but eight of those nine previous seasons did not have Harbaugh as the coach. The floor seems higher than it’s ever been, but you simply cannot discount the rest of the division and how they’ve improved, specifically the Broncos whom have only continued to lean into their identity.
But so have the Chargers. And all of this is wishful thinking and what-ifs until the season actually arrives, but it’s hard not to feel slighted in some way, especially after being the most recent team to finish second to Kansas City in the division.
Will the Broncos really end up leapfrogging the Chargers this year? I sure hope not.