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!