The Chargers, along with the rest of the NFL, announced their 2025 regular season schedule on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
Here are my thoughts on the slate:<\/p>\n
Three consecutive AFC West opponents to begin the season? Woof<\/p>\n
The Chargers have absolutely zero time to get comfortable in the regular before they get hit with a slew of high-stakes games as they begin the year with three consecutive games against AFC West opponents.<\/p>\n
First, the team travels to Brazil to \u201chost\u201d the Chiefs in what should be a heck of a matchup to kickoff the new season. That leads into a road game against Pete Carroll and the Raiders before they return for the home opener in SoFi Stadium against the Broncos.<\/p>\n
Beginning the year with a stretch like this isn\u2019t just a weird coincidence, it\u2019s honestly a brutal draw. The Chargers are the ONLY team to face three divisional opponents in their first three weeks. Yes, that\u2019s right. No other team this year will see a similar start to the year. Some teams start with two consecutive or play two of their first three in the division, but the Chargers are the only team who will be done with half of their divisional games before the start of Week Four.<\/p>\n
Seeing as the AFC West looks to be one of the best divisions in football yet again, this start could have a massive impact on the team and their outlook on the season depending on how it goes. And let me be clear: I would not be surprised at any of the potential outcomes here. If the team lucks out and goes 3-0, 2-1, 1-2, or even 0-3 to begin the year, none of those would shock me. That\u2019s how much I respect the division this year.<\/p>\n
The Chargers don\u2019t really have a \u201csoft\u201d stretch on the schedule this year<\/p>\n
When I consider what a \u201cstretch\u201d is on an NFL schedule \u2014 whether an easy or difficult one \u2014 I usually deem it to be at least three games in length. When I look at the Chargers schedule, I don\u2019t see any three-game stretch that consists of \u201cgimmes.\u201d<\/p>\n
In all honesty, there\u2019s barely a two-game span involving teams the Chargers should beat and thats when they face the Dolphins and Colts. And yes, the Dolphins aren\u2019t exactly a pushover due to having some insane players like Tyreek Hill, but I\u2019m not buying the hype back on them just yet with them losing Terron Armstead to retirement following a down year for them as a whole on offense.<\/p>\n
The Colts don\u2019t know who will start at quarterback and there isn\u2019t a real name on their roster that would inspire me too much if I were a fan. Anthony Richardson is hurt and tired (yes, seriously) too often and Daniel Jones is still Daniel Jones.<\/p>\n
The post-bye week stretch is an absolute gauntlet<\/p>\n
A lot of teams who end up making the playoffs are the ones who manage to hit their stride through the second half of the schedule and win the games they must to sneak into one of the final three seeds of their conference or win their division by a slim margin. I\u2019m not confident to say the Chargers are where they need to be to take the AFC West crown so they\u2019re in a chronic state of having to win enough games to be a wild card.<\/p>\n
After a Week 12 bye, the Chargers will face the Raiders at home, followed by Monday Night Football at SoFi with the Eagles, a road trip to the Chiefs, and games against the Cowboys (away), Texans (home), and Broncos (away). Four of those games come against playoff teams from a year ago and half of them are divisional games. This six-game stretch is, without a doubt, going to decide the Chargers postseason hopes. I can feel it in my bones already this far out.<\/p>\n
Through the first 11 games, the only games I could say are \u201cshould-wins\u201d are Raiders x2, Giants, Colts, Titans, and Jaguars. That\u2019s a floor of 6-5 if they, at the minimum, win against those teams only before the bye. When I look at the final six games, I see 3-3 or 2-4 if they drop the second game against Denver. A 9-8 season would be a letdown and an 8-9 record would have the fan base in shambles.<\/p>\n
I know the fan base is not used to the idea of the Chargers playing above their talent for more than a single year at a time, but Harbaugh, Greg Roman, and Jesse Minter will have to keep this train humming in year two if they don\u2019t wish to have a wash of a season when expectations are as high as they\u2019ve ever been for this team since the start of the decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chargers, along with the rest of the NFL, announced their 2025 regular season schedule on Wednesday night.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2064],"tags":[90,1205,2451,18442,241,7,23,1134,29,1436,723,1435,1014,262,2444,2443,6,883,152,8403,24,1320],"class_list":{"0":"post-54102","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-chargers","8":"tag-analysis","9":"tag-blue","10":"tag-bolts","11":"tag-cakewalks","12":"tag-chargers","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-for","15":"tag-from","16":"tag-front-page","17":"tag-harbaugh","18":"tag-in","19":"tag-jim","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-los-angeles-chargers","22":"tag-losangeles","23":"tag-losangeleschargers","24":"tag-nfl","25":"tag-no","26":"tag-of","27":"tag-schedule","28":"tag-the","29":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114516158357051337","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54102","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=54102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}