The Los Angeles Chargers WILL win the AFC West this season

The Los Angeles Chargers look to build off of an exciting 2018 campaign with an even better, and division-winning, 2019 season.

Very rarely do I make bold claims about what a team will do in the upcoming season. Predictions are part of the job but rarely are those predictions presented as guarantees. Today, I have a guarantee for you: the Los Angeles Chargers will undoubtedly win the AFC West.

It might seem far-fetched, it might seem over-optimistic and it might seem like I have some homer bias. That is perfectly fine. Winning the AFC West certainly won’t be easy, but the Chargers have what it takes to get it done.

The AFC West is going to be tough this year and will be better than casual football fans might realize. The Kansas City Chiefs were the number one seed last year, the Denver Broncos are always a hard team to beat with their defense and the Oakland Raiders have developed a good plan and will actually surprise a lot of people next season.

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The biggest hurdle to get over is the Chiefs, a team who beat the Chargers nine games in a row before Philip Rivers orchestrated a comeback at Arrowhead Stadium to keep the Chargers in the division hunt late last season.

And that is exactly the foundation for why this is possible. It is not like the Chiefs outclassed the Chargers last year. The two teams had the exact same record, 12-4, with the Chargers arguably having the more impressive wins with road wins in Seattle, Pittsburgh and Kansas City.

Plus, while he is still going to be one of the best quarterbacks in the league, Patrick Mahomes is set to regress. It might not be a massive regression and he still will probably be in the MVP discussion.

However, there is film on Mahomes now with his tendencies more revealed to the league. That is going to undoubtedly impact his production and even if it means losing one more game than last year, that is all the Los Angeles Chargers need.

And while the Chiefs have been working on the defense this offseason, it still is one of the worst in the league. That will catch up to the team eventually.

Meanwhile, the Chargers boast arguably the most complete roster on the team. The only weak point is the offensive line, which is seeing several faces return from injury. Rivers was great last year, he has plenty of weapons around him and the defense somehow got better.

If the defense can just stay relatively healthy and get a full season out of Joey Bosa then it could be the best in the entire NFL. Having a stingy defense with an offense that has so much firepower is going to be hard to overcome.

And most importantly: the young Los Angeles Chargers now have experience. Aside from Rivers and a few other veterans, such as Antonio Gates, this Chargers team is very young and had no playoff experience entering last season.

The team has that experience now. They know what it is like not only to win in the playoffs but lose in the playoffs. They won huge games in the regular season last season that are undoubtedly going to translate into game time situations this season.

The Chiefs will still undoubtedly be a playoff team and it will likely come down to the last week of the season yet again. However, this go around, the Los Angeles Chargers will be the ones representing the AFC West.