Let’s take another look around the AFC West as the Chiefs come off their bye, the Broncos creep into the hunt, the Chargers win and the Raiders lose.
Welcome back to another edition of Around the AFC West.
It was an uneventful week for Kansas City Chiefs fans as the team enjoyed their bye in Week 12, but that doesn’t mean the last few days were entirely uneventful. Let’s take a look at what happened around the division as everyone prepares for Week 13.
Los Angeles Chargers
The Los Angeles Chargers took on the struggling Arizona Cardinals on Sunday in Carson, California and won handily by a final of 45-10. While this wasn’t necessarily surprising (the Cardinals are not a very good football team), the most surprising came from the performance of Philip Rivers. Rivers tied the NFL mark for consecutive completions and broke the records for the most completions to start a game and the highest completion percentage. This says as much about Rivers as it does his pass catchers, but it shows, yet again, that the Chargers can be dangerous.
This was a complete game from the Chargers who saw 7 different receivers catch passes accompanied by a nice outing from Melvin Gordon and Austin Ekeler. This game also saw the emergence of Joey Bosa. Bosa played last week in a limited roll after having been kept out all season with a bone bruise. This week, Bosa recorded two sacks and five tackles.
Unfortunately for the Chargers, they did not exit this game unscathed. In the third quarter, star running back Melvin Gordon went down with a knee injury. He did not return for the remainder of the game. After the game, reports came out that Gordon had suffered an MCL sprain. These reports were later confirmed. Gordon is listed as week-to-week, but it puts into question his availability for the huge match-up against the Chiefs at Arrowhead in a few weeks.
Next week, the Chargers travel to Pittsburgh for a huge match-up against the Steelers. The Steelers are looking to keep their hopes of a first round-bye in the playoffs alive while the Chargers are looking to keep pace with the Chiefs in the AFC West. This is a primetime match-up that will pit two future hall-of-fame quarterbacks against each other. This is sure to be a great game. Game time is Sunday night at 7:20 p.m.