Annual Chargers hype train has left the station and fans must not jump aboard

The LA Chargers are coming off one of the worst seasons in recent franchise history. Los Angeles finished with just five wins in a 17-game season, lost a record-setting game to the Las Vegas Raiders, saw the franchise quarterback get injured twice and eventually ended up cleaning house and hitting reset.

This ushered in a new regime that Chargers fans are excited about. The team finally landed a premier head coach in Jim Harbaugh and brought along with him a new GM from one of the most respected teams in football, the Baltimore Ravens.

Fans are not the only ones who are excited about the Chargers. With the combination of Harbaugh and Justin Herbert, the team has naturally received some buzz this offseason. After what appears to be a strong draft class, some are even calling the Chargers one of the 10 best teams in the entire league.

Chargers dubbed a top-10 team in the NFL by Colin Cowherd

According to Colin Cowherd, the Chargers are the 10th-best team in the NFL and the fifth-best team in the AFC. This is a big jump from having the fifth overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft after only winning five games last season.

It is always great to see the Chargers get love from those in the national media, especially when there are those on the flipside who spew unnecessary rhetoric about the team. That being said, this is not an uncommon occurrence at this point in the calendar year.

This has become a yearly tradition of sorts for the Chargers and is a predictable cycle that typically ends in the same way. The Chargers will make some good offseason moves (in this case mostly being personnel-based) and it will result in the Bolts becoming everyone's favorite dark horse for the season.

*Side note, is it really considered a dark horse if everyone and their mother in the media is picking them to be the dark horse? But I digress.*

Unfortunately for the Bolts, this preseason hype does not always lead to success. The Chargers have only made the playoffs one time in the last five years and in that one trip, they suffered one of the worst blown-lead playoff losses in NFL history.

Before he became the biggest villain in SoFi Stadium, Brandon Staley was lauded as the next great young head coach. After just missing the playoffs in his first season, the Chargers went all-in on free-agency spending for the 2022 season.

After that blown playoff lead the Chargers deserved no buzz, but they still got it. Kellen Moore was ushered in as the new offensive coordinator who would fix the offense. Fans pointed to the health of Rashawn Slater and J.C. Jackson as huge additions. Selecting Quentin Johnston was viewed as this move that would spark the Chargers' offense.

None of that obviously happened and many fans were left disappointed. This year the narrative is around Harbaugh, his staff and the rookies the team just brought in. While those are all great-sounding narratives, Chargers fans should know by now that they have to see it happen in real time before getting excited.

It is easy to jump on the hype train in the summer months when there is nothing else going on in the NFL world. But Chargers fans need to be careful, as the hype train could derail shortly after it leaves the station.