Los Angeles Chargers fans have to be among the most frustrated in the league.
Of course, if you haven’t followed the team since its days in San Diego, you might be just catching on to how often this team falls short when it shouldn’t. The trend of the Chargers losing close games in crunch time has followed them for years.
And now that the team has started 0-2 and the Kansas City Chiefs are on their way to town, it finds itself directly behind the 8-ball and we’re still in September. Things can get ugly for this team and soon.
The Chiefs are playing as well as any team in the NFL while riding the momentum of their upset win over the New England Patriots in Foxborough. The Chargers will be expected to lose to them and let’s suppose they do. Now they’re 0-3 and playing in the toughest division in football.
Looking at the schedule, the team faces a pair of NFC East opponents in back-to-back games in the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants. Those would be considered must-win games, particularly when you look at their next three opponents.
The Chargers go to Oakland, come back home to face the Denver Broncos and if that’s not harsh enough, they then travel to Foxborough where the Pats will be waiting. As stated, things could get quite ugly for this team this year. Could you see this team being 1-7 or even 0-8? They’re a much better team than that, but that is a brutal schedule.
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The bottom line is if this team can’t defeat teams in its division, then this season is lost. And those teams are all better than the Chargers. In fact, you could make the argument that those are the top three teams in the NFL right now.
The Chargers have their chance to change the course of the season this Sunday against the Chiefs.
Falling short in Denver and then giving a game to the Miami Dolphins has put them in an unenviable position. The odds of teams who start the year 0-2 are not promising.
Since NFL went to 12 playoff teams in 1990, only 12 percent of teams to start season 0-2 went on to make playoffs.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 18, 2017
So how do the Chargers right the ship? Can they right the ship? One thing is for sure, time to turn things around is running thin.