Around the AFC West, Week 8: Chiefs roar back, Raiders survive
By Ellen Mathis
Let’s travel around the AFC West as the Chiefs roar back, Chargers and Broncos sputter and lose, and the Raiders survive the Texans.
Good Wednesday, Chiefs Kingdom! What a happy week this is!
It seems that for the Chiefs everything is starting to click on offense. I won’t run away with things and say every single problem is solved, but it certainly felt like this week showed what the Chiefs have been saying all along: it was going to take some time for everything to gel. Maybe JuJu is right and video games do bring us together.
Before we get into all that, though, let’s look at the rest of the AFC West as the Chiefs head into their bye…
Los Angeles Chargers
The Chargers are really struggling this year. This franchise just cannot seem to avoid devastating injuries and in their contest against the Seahawks, it seems that they suffered more. The Seahawks have been a surprise this year. Clearly, they knew something about Russell Wilson and Geno Smith because Geno has been lighting it up while Wilson has been awful. More on that later.
Sunday’s contest between the Chargers and the Seahawks, though, yielded another loss for the Chargers on a weekend when they could have pulled close to the Chiefs and further distanced themselves from the Raiders and Broncos.
The game was never really that close – Seattle jumped out to an early lead and the Chargers were never really able to get back into it. The worst part, however, was not the loss of the game. Rather, it was the additional injuries the Chargers sustained.
First, star cornerback J.C. Jackson went down with a knee injury. Later reports confirmed it was season-ending. Not only did the Chargers lose a key piece of their secondary, but they also watched as wide receiver Mike Williams suffered an ankle injury. How much time Williams will miss remains to be seen.
Clearly, these injuries are significant and the Chargers will desperately need the rest of their team to remain healthy if they have any hope of navigating the middle of the season enough to earn a playoff spot.
That’s why the Chargers are so lucky their bye is this week – they enter this week hoping to get healthy before they get a matchup with the Falcons. That should be an easy game, but the Falcons did just beat the Buccaneers, so who knows…