At the time of this writing, Tommy Kelly is ahead of Cam Thomas by a margin of eleven votes. It would appear that we have an underweight nose tackle voted in. For the purpose of the exercise, try not to be offended if I refer to Kelly as Cam Thomas-Lite or Diet Cam Thomas. All of the strength and flavor with less weight and less wins. Why is this making me want a beer? Hmmmm… Moving on.

Today, we figure out who will be our right guard. Let’s meet our candidates: Ryan Lilja of the Kansas City Chiefs and Chris Kuper of the Denver Broncos. Yes, I know they are not Chargers and both of their teams have been unable to compete with us for the division out of late, but these are both great linemen who deserve to be in the conversation. Honest!

Ryan Lilja and his career speak for themselves. Barely eligible for this AFC West voting, as Lilja just became a Chief in this past off season. Or became a Chief again, depending how you look at it. Kansas City picked him up as an un-drafted free agent in 2004, after which he was placed on the practice squad and waived that September, before being claimed off waivers by the Indianapolis Colts. While in Indy, he started 29 out of 66 games and went to two Super Bowls, one of which was a victory and a ring-worthy performance. After this previous Super Bowl, which was not a victory for the Colts, Lilja was released on March 8th and signed with his hometown Chiefs eight days later.

On the other hand, our other candidate, Chris Kuper, has been with the Broncos ever since he entered the league in 2006. Though, he has not had a career that is as long or high-profile as Lilja, this talented right guard has only given away five sacks in 42 career starts. For a guy so young, that’s outstanding. Toss him in there with Ryan Harris and Ryan Clady and you’ve got probably three of the most talented younger offensive linemen.

I gotta say, in spite of Denver bombing last season after starting it off with six straight wins, I have to give the edge to Kuper. The Colts offensive line was part of the reason that they lost this past Super Bowl. Kuper, who has always been a consistent force and displays the talent of a much more experienced player, is certainly the player that I would rather have in this spot.

I guess I am done throwing my opinion out there, time for you to express yours. This is the last day of voting!

Ready… Set… Vote!

I suppose I should begin the day of by explaining our choice of defense.

We are going with the 3-4 system, because three out of four teams in the AFC West use that system. simple as that. Sorry Oakland, but you’re the odd team out.

That still doesn’t mean that Raiders defensive players can’t get elected, Richard Seymour came from playing a 3-4 in New England and is very adept at the system, but that’s not who we are voting on today.

For some reason, we were unable to decide between Cam Thomas of the Chargers and Tommy Kelly of the Raiders to anchor that nose tackle spot.

Of course, Cam Thomas is a rookie, but between him and Tommy Kelly, the much larger Thomas would be a better fit in this type of system. Rookie or not, he would be the most adept to man the position. For those of you who have seen him, Cam is two inches shorter than Kelly, but the Chargers space eater is 30 lbs. heavier and would be harder to double team in a 3-4 or 3-3-5 situation. Anything with only three down lineman, really, give me Cam Thomas any day.

Though, Kelly did put up some decent numbers last season. His 55 tackles and single sack are gonna get even better since the Raiders drafted Lamarr Houston, who I would love to see playing next to Kelly. Throw Rolando McClain in there and you’ve got a much scarier front seven in Oakland. This unit might do some justice to perennial All-Pro Nnamdi Asomugha. It’s nice to have a shutdown corner. I’ll bet Nnamdi would love to win some games this year.

Now, as I seek out a place for lunch that doesn’t have Raiders fans working in the kitchen, I will leave you with our poll. Make your vote count. This has been a fun exercise so far and I can’t wait to get these rosters done so that we can start comparing them to the other divisions. It will be nice to show the world that the AFC West has some serious players and is about to get more competitive. Well, at least slightly more competitive. These past few years you might as well have addressed our division as the “AFC San Diego and Others” division.

Congratulations to Sebastian Janikowski for beating Nate Kaeding in yesterdays voting.

Results from yesterday: Kaeding- 37 votes. Janikowski- 123 votes.

It would seam that the playoff loss to the Jets is still on the back of our minds, and our truck windows (hi Philip), and rightfully so. Some might argue that if the Chargers and the Raiders swapped kickers, then the Chargers would have more than likely gone to the Super Bowl. I believe it was a fellow FanSided writer over at JustBlogBaby.com who I first saw shed light on that scenario. Sorry Nasty Nate, the fans have spoken. Hell, I must admit that I was half tempted to nominate Nick Novak for the Chargers instead, but no. Alas, I took the high road. Did it really matter? It rarely does…

Now, we bring up the next round of voting. Let’s pick our nose tackle, people! Ready… set… VOTE!

Todays voting will choose our kicker. This poll will be closed tomorrow morning and a new one will open so we can vote for our nose tackle. The final poll will be placed here, you guessed it, on Thursday morning.

So, between San Diego Chargers Nate Kaeding and Oakland Raiders Sebastian Janikowski, who would you rather have booting the ball through the uprights?

Happy voting. This has been a fun project. Thanks for helping us break each tie. We would probably just keep arguing about them if we didn’t have this vote. That still doesn’t mean you can’t argue in the comment box! Whatever ends up as the result will be your guys’ fault doing anyways.

Enjoy. Also, don’t forget that once all of our divisional All-Stars are chosen, you will get to see each division square off on the main page. Gotta love FanSided.