{"id":36220,"date":"2025-05-09T11:11:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T11:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/36220\/"},"modified":"2025-05-09T11:11:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T11:11:09","slug":"retired-all-pro-says-the-chargers-will-win-the-afc-west-over-the-chiefs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/36220\/","title":{"rendered":"Retired All-Pro says the Chargers will win the AFC West over the Chiefs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former All-Pro linebacker Shawne Merriman recently appeared as a guest on the &#8216;Up &amp; Adams Show with Kay Adams&#8217; to share his thoughts on the <a href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/football\/nfl\/teams\/kansas-city-chiefs\/339\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Kansas City Chiefs;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Kansas City Chiefs<\/a> not repeating as AFC West champions this season.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not just saying it because I&#8217;m a Charger. I think they&#8217;re going to win the division this year. I really feel that way. I don&#8217;t want to take anything away from Patrick Mahomes,&#8221; said Merriman. They (Chiefs) always (have) a great team and a helluva coach in Andy Reid. But truthfully, where the <a href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/football\/nfl\/teams\/los-angeles-chargers\/357\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Chargers;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Chargers<\/a> at, the jump that they made. Remember, before the season started last year, nobody saw the Chargers even being a playoff team.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Merriman began playing with the Chargers in San Diego from 2005 to 2010. He earned All-Pro, Pro Bowl, and Defensive Rookie of the Year honors during that time.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That was the exact same team, almost that minus a Keenan Allen and some of these other guys that Jim Harbaugh took over; nobody saw them going to the playoffs, so if he&#8217;s able to do that in one year, what are they gonna be looking like this year? With a full year under their belt. New guys.&#8221; Said Merriman. &#8220;The coaching staff, everybody understands the system now, so if you don&#8217;t think they&#8217;re not gonna win a division, you know, it&#8217;s just, it&#8217;s crazy not to say that I think they&#8217;re the best team in the AFC West right now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Chargers lost to the Houston Texans in the postseason&#8217;s Wild Card round and were defeated by the Chiefs twice in the regular season. Kansas City has controlled the AFC West throughout Patrick Mahomes&#8217; tenure as the starting quarterback.<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on Chiefs Wire: <a href=\"https:\/\/chiefswire.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/nfl\/chiefs\/2025\/05\/09\/former-all-pro-says-the-los-angeles-chargers-will-win-the-afc-west-over-the-kansas-city-chiefs\/83467825007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Former All-Pro says the Chargers will win the AFC West over the Chiefs;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Former All-Pro says the Chargers will win the AFC West over the Chiefs<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former All-Pro linebacker Shawne Merriman recently appeared as a guest on the &#8216;Up &amp; Adams Show with Kay&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2064],"tags":[1991,501,241,7,253,1012,110,9892,1328,1014,262,2444,2443,6,499,12112,5340],"class_list":{"0":"post-36220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-chargers","8":"tag-afc-west","9":"tag-andy-reid","10":"tag-chargers","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-houston-texans","13":"tag-jim-harbaugh","14":"tag-kansas-city-chiefs","15":"tag-kay-adams","16":"tag-keenan-allen","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-los-angeles-chargers","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-losangeleschargers","21":"tag-nfl","22":"tag-patrick-mahomes","23":"tag-shawne-merriman","24":"tag-the-chargers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114477575970062766","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}