Nah, the Ravens have been legitimately better than the Chiefs thus far. Sagarin predictor which goes completely off points has the Ravens #8 and the Chiefs #11 and that doesn't even take into account that the Chiefs are +4 on turnovers (+2 on fumbles) to the Ravens -2 (-1) or that the Chiefs have been playing with a slight rest and injury advantage due to having their bye in Week 4.


The thing is that it's like Kneel B4 Zod said. Most of those mistakes just aren't repeatable. Like the fumble where the receiver left the ball on the ground. What do you think the chances are that he does that at any time again in his NFL career? I'd say pretty much zero. If anything the fact that the Chargers did that last week makes them the least likely team to do it again the rest of the way.

And fumbles in general are pretty much all luck to the point where when they do studies, they can't even find a statistically significant correlation between fumbles in one season and fumbles in the next season, not only among teams, but even among individual players. Just look at Adrian Peterson, led the league in fumbles over a 3 year span among running backs, and now he's gone 160 touches without one. It really is just a fluky aspect of football that has a big impact in the short-term. Fumbles are basically where the Chargers have been getting raped all season as they're currently -8 on them, a margin that's 5 fumbles worse than anyone else in the AFC, and 2 fumbles worse than anyone else in the NFL. Also, if there is any reason a team could actually be "bad at fumbling" and not have it be luck, it would just be because they get sacked a lot, but only one of the Chargers lost fumbles this year was on Rivers.

I don't think they're likely to win the division because they're already 2.5 games back, and the Chiefs are solid enough that they'll likely finish with 9 wins, but if you started the season over again, I'd say they'd be more of a favorite to win their division than any team in the NFL.

Yeah well, and the fact that they didn't make their coinflip FG. But otherwise, it's all the mental errors which Brady, Belichick and their unstoppable force of white receivers are immune to.

The "fumble" not being touched and the other "fumble" which looked like a forward pass were pretty damn fluky. There is little other way to interpret them and they turned into what 10 points for the Pats.

SD 363 yards to NE 179 yards this week but -4 in the TOV battle. SD also won the TOP 34 to 26.

Just put rough spreads into your quote to get an idea of how likely KC would be to win those games, and yeah it looks like a 6-4 finish for KC is likely which would make SD have to finish 8-1 just to force a tiebreak. So look, I agree with you there that the Chiefs are likely to win the division and San Diego will probably be sitting on the outside looking in with 8 or 9 wins just like Pittsburgh was last year. That doesn't mean that the Chargers aren't a good team though, just that 16 game seasons have a lot of variance and even the top teams are going to miss the playoffs every now and then.

It would have been better than a coin flip if they didn't have a false start (another mental error). I think you guys just undervalue the mental aspect of the game. The only legit fumble was probably also the most lucky. The reciever leaving the ball on the ground is a mental error. Of course it won't happen again but that doesn't matter as it is still part of the team. It will probably be something else next week as it was something else the week before. Of course they are going to win some games because of talen and may actually end up at 9-7 or 8-8 but for them to be ranked as the 4th best team in the NFL right now with how they have played is just insane.

You ranked them as the fourth best team in the NFL. That's not "good", that's damn near elite. I don't think you'd get an argument that they are a good team, that's pretty clear.

The Giants have definitely looked good lately, but don't forget what they did when they actually played the AFC elite teams earlier in the season. Lost 38-14 in Indianapolis, and then lost 29-10 to the Titans at home. I don't think you can give them too much credit for giving up 35 points to Dallas with Romo out so that leaves the Bears win and the Texans win as the only legitimately impressive wins on the season.

Don't get me wrong, they're solid and they could grow into a very good team by the end of the season, but right now I think they fit in much better with the Falcons/Packers/Eagles/Vikings than they do with the elite teams from the AFC.

OK, they're one of the very top teams, is that better? They're roughly equal to the Steelers/Colts/Pats/Titans/Ravens/Jets, and they're significantly better than anyone from the NFC.

For all of their being "unlucky" the Chargers really suck on the road. I watched all of the Rams/Chargers game and we basically outplayed them for 3 of the 4 quarters and we are by no means the finished article.

Not a chance would I have them at 4. I think somewhere between 10-13 is a bit more realistic.

thread needs phb's game thread highlights package. late games were such fun. raiders fanboy though.

No, not better at all. They are not in any way roughly equal to any of those teams. Unless your definition of "roughly" is drasticly different than mine.

if you think there is a gigantic difference between the Chargers and Titans, you really should be betting big on the Chargers this week.

Most misleading 35 points of all time?

Giants have a top 3 defense. They have also run like **** wrt to turnovers, but I suppose that only counts if you are 2-4?

They completely outplayed the Titans and lost only because of TOs and penalties. How is this ignored?

I'll be perfectly honest, I don't know much about the Titans and haven't watched many of their games. The other teams mentioned I know plenty about and don't think that San Diego is in the same tier.

Vikings?

I don't know how it isn't impressive to outgain Dallas 500-250 yards and be up 38-20 with ~4 minutes left with 5 turnovers.

Yeah Romo got hurt, the Giants have knocked 5 QBs out of the game in 7 weeks. A pattern is forming.

Yeah Giants are really emerging as the stand out team in the NFC.

I think I heard them say during last nights game that the Giants D has now knocked out 5 QBs from a game. Thats pretty sick.

Giants have averaged 3 TOVs per game given up on O this year. Isn't that a patten as well? They have forced 17. They are -5 in the TOV battle in their 2 losses. They have been out yarded in 2 games (Detroit and Indy and they are 1-1 in those games).

And they are 5-2 despite that run bad while we are arguing why the Chargers are so much better than their record because of issues like TOs.

Giants have 6 INTs off of deflected passes ffs and I'd love to see a split on how many of their own fumbles they've lost/recovered.

you do know this weeks game vs the Pats was a coinflip away from OT, and the Chargers outgained the Pats by a huge amount, right?

if they played again, do you think the Chargers would be more or less likely to leave 2 live balls no the field? if less likely, then how would that affect the game and score?

They played 7 games and didn't knock out: Peyton Manning, Matt Schaub, Vince Young

which I think makes that untrue. and Matt Moore was pulled after being sacked with ~2 minutes left so not sure if that is really considered knocking a QB out

Matt Moore was knocked out and they knocked out two QBs from the Bears game.

In that case, we're all going to Candy Mountain.

Less likely. However, I think the Pats Offense would play significantly better and the mental errors would most likely manifest itself in other ways. It wasn't like one mental error determined the game. The Chargers made stupid mistakes over and over and over. That's part of that team and is a huge problem that probably is not a quick fix.