LA Chargers: 4 keys to winning the AFC West in 2021
By Jason Reed
The LA Chargers enter an early Week 7 bye week with a 4-2 record after the toughest part of the 2021 schedule. The Bolts played three likely AFC playoff teams in the first six weeks, going 2-1 by beating the Kansas City Chiefs and Cleveland Browns.
The Chargers also fought close with one of the top contenders in the NFC, the Dallas Cowboys, only losing on a last-second field goal. Throw in a quality road win over Washington and a two-touchdown win over another potential playoff team in Las Vegas and the Chargers look to be in a great position to make a run.
As we know, nothing is guaranteed in the NFL and that is evident by the Chargers' track record when starting a season 4-2. While they are in a great position to make the playoffs and potentially win the AFC West, they have to continue to execute to do so.
Here are the four keys for the LA Chargers to win the AFC West:
1. Beating the teams they should beat
This one is rather simple. The LA Chargers have a really easy schedule after the bye week and if they are going to win the division and outlast the Kansas City Chiefs then they cannot drop disappointing losses to bad teams.
Look, every good team has an ugly game and every team usually has at least one weird loss against a bad team where they fell asleep at the wheel. The absolute most the Chargers could have is one, but quite frankly, they should drop any games to any of the losing teams remaining on the schedule.
Six of the team's final 11 games are against teams that currently have a record below .500 (Denver twice, New England, Philadelphia, New York and Houston). There are another two games against .500 teams that, quite frankly, are not all that impressive (Pittsburgh Steelers).
The Kansas City Chiefs are also .500 but we cannot group them with Minnesota and Pittsburgh. The Raiders and Bengals are the only remaining opponents that currently have a record above .500 and the Chargers are still better than both of those teams.
Simply put: the Chargers are going to be favored in most of their games and should take advantage. No ugly losses like we would see in years before.