I used 3 AI Agents to take a look at the upcoming NFL season. Last week, I had them give their predictions for the NFC West Predictions and this time I’m moving over to the AFC West to see what they think will happen. Each AI will take a look at the division and show their work, with predictions. Overall, the feedback I gather is that ChatGPT takes a deeper look, Claude overanalyzes, and Google Gemini kinda doesn’t know sports too well as I have to have it rewrite it’s post due to roster errors.

So, let’s take a look and see what Google Gemini, ChatGpt, and Claude have to say about the AFC West for this season.

Google Gemini

AFC West 2026 Preview: Dynasty Fatigue, Mile-High Heat, and Harbaugh’s Lab

If the NFC West is daytime soap opera television, the AFC West is a high-budget Michael Bay reboot with real explosions and intense staring contests.

Between Kansas City trying to prove the dynasty isn’t cooked, Sean Payton loading up a high-altitude arsenal in Denver, Jim Harbaugh running an intense smashmouth science experiment in LA, and the Raiders looking at rookie phenoms on the Las Vegas Strip, this division is poised to be an all-out demolition derby.

1. Denver Broncos: Sean Payton’s Mile-High Empire

Nobody saw Denver storming the gates and snatching the division crown last season, but Sean Payton has turned Empower Field back into a house of horrors.

Bo Nix enters Year 3 looking fully healthy and holding the keys to a newly supercharged sports car.After trading for Jaylen Waddle to pair alongside Courtland Sutton, Denver’s wide receiver room suddenly possesses hyper-drive speed. Add in Patrick Surtain II locking down an entire zip code on defense, and Payton is strutting the sideline with the swagger of Oppenheimer standing over the test site.

The Reality:Denver rode an absurd wave of one-score wins last year. If the injury luck normalizes, things get tighter, but this roster is legitimately built like a heavyweight title contender.
The Outlook: A balanced, lethal operation with genuine home-field advantage and zero interest in bowing down to Arrowhead anymore.

2. Kansas City Chiefs: The Empire Strikes Back (Hopefully)

Seeing the Chiefs finish below .500 and miss the playoffs felt like a glitch in the simulation. Rob Gronkowski went on national television to declare the dynasty dead, and Patrick Mahomes spent the summer absorbing that commentary like fuel.

To stop the bleeding, Andy Reid went out and nabbed Super Bowl MVP running back Kenneth Walker in free agency, giving this backfield a pure downhill hammer they haven’t had in years.Travis Kelce is back for another tour of duty, and while Mahomes might not have the luxury of 13-win cruise control anymore, counting him out is like walking out of a horror movie before the villain sits up in the final frame.

The Reality: The margin for error is gone. The defense still has Steve Spagnuolo cooking up psycho blitzes on 3rd-and-long, but Mahomes will have to play like an MVP every week to survive this division meat-grinder.
The Outlook: Written off too quickly. They won’t run away with the division, but betting against Mahomes in December usually ends poorly for everyone else.

3. Los Angeles Chargers: Harbaugh’s Heavy-Metal Lab

Jim Harbaugh took one look at back-to-back playoff heartbreaks, showed Greg Roman the door, and brought in Mike McDaniel to run the offense. Putting McDaniel’s mad-scientist playbook into Justin Herbert’s rocket-launcher right arm is the NFL equivalent of dropping a Ferrari engine into a Sherman tank.

With franchise tackles Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt back from injury to rebuild the Great Wall of Inglewood, Herbert finally gets more than 1.8 seconds in the pocket. Harbaugh wants this team to wear khakis, eat raw steaks, and run opponents into the turf.

The Reality: It’s the Chargers. By Week 10, their medical tent usually looks like an episode of M*A*S*H. If the offensive line stays off injured reserve, they are terrifying. If it buckles, Herbert will be running for his life again.
The Outlook: The highest offensive ceiling in the division, accompanied by the ever-present threat of classic Chargers fourth-quarter tragicomedy.

4. Las Vegas Raiders: Welcome to the Mendoza Era

The Raiders spent the offseason in full Vegas high-roller mode, turning over the keys to new head coach Klint Kubiak and drafting Heisman-winning national champion Fernando Mendoza at No. 1 overall.

With Kirk Cousins serving as the veteran chaperone until Mendoza gets the green light, this offense actually has legitimate cheat codes with Brock Bowers and Ashton Jeanty dominating touches. Maxx Crosby will still play every defensive snap like an untethered barbarian chasing down quarterbacks with bad intentions, but the wideout room is still looking for reliable answers.

The Reality: Starting over with a rookie signal-caller against Spagnuolo, Payton, and Harbaugh is the football version of entering the Hunger Games with a butter knife.
The Outlook: Incredibly fun highlight reels from Bowers and Jeanty, Crosby wrecking tackles, but ultimately a gap year before the young roster hits full stride.

AFC West Projected Finish

Place	Team	Projected Record	Vibe Check
1st	Denver Broncos	12–5	Payton’s machine rolls; Waddle + Nix take off
2nd	Kansas City Chiefs	11–6	The Mahomes revenge tour hits the Wild Card
3rd	Los Angeles Chargers	10–7	Harbaugh & McDaniel unleash Herbert’s arm
4th	Las Vegas Raiders	6–11	The Bowers & Jeanty show navigating rookie bumps

Denver edges out Kansas City to keep the division crown in the Rockies, but expect three playoff teams to claw their way out of this bloodbath come January.

ChatGPT

The AFC West enters 2026 like a streaming service that accidentally renewed every expensive show at once. Denver is the defending champion. Kansas City is attempting a prestige reboot. Los Angeles hired a celebrated offensive auteur. Las Vegas has changed the cast, the director and probably the catering.

Last season shattered the division’s usual script. The Broncos went 14-3 and earned the AFC’s No. 1 seed. The Chargers finished 11-6. The Chiefs crashed to 6-11 and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2014. The Raiders finished 3-14, which was less a season than a very long audition tape.

Now Patrick Mahomes is returning from major knee surgery, Bo Nix is back from a broken ankle, Justin Herbert has Mike McDaniel calling the offense, and the Raiders have paired Kirk Cousins with No. 1 pick Fernando Mendoza. Nobody in this division took the quiet offseason package.

The quick prediction

Finish	Team	Projected record	Division record	Vibe
1	Denver Broncos	12-5	4-2	The sequel is darker, harder and still pretty good
2	Los Angeles Chargers	11-6	4-2	A software update with spectacular new features
3	Kansas City Chiefs	10-7	3-3	The dynasty reunion tour
4	Las Vegas Raiders	7-10	1-5	A competent rebuild, which counts as luxury in Vegas

1. Denver Broncos: defending the mountain

Prediction: 12-5, AFC West champions

Denver’s 2025 season ended with the cruelest plot twist in the division. Bo Nix broke his ankle during the divisional-round victory, leaving Jarrett Stidham to start a 10-7 AFC Championship Game loss to New England. It was the football version of reaching the final boss and discovering your controller has disconnected.

Nix is healthy now, entering Year 3 with something he did not have last September: proof that his team can survive the entire AFC obstacle course. He also has Jaylen Waddle. Denver traded for the former Dolphins receiver to pair his speed with Courtland Sutton’s size, giving Sean Payton a receiving combination that can attack every level instead of asking Sutton to be the whole airport.

The backfield offers J.K. Dobbins, RJ Harvey and rookie Jonah Coleman. That is not a fantasy manager’s dream because the touches may change from week to week, but it is useful real-football depth. The offensive line remains a strength. If Nix takes another measured step instead of trying to become Josh Allen in one summer, this offense should be comfortably above average.

The defense is the reason Denver stays on top. The 2025 Broncos produced a league-record 68 sacks. Nik Bonitto and Zach Allen lead a front that treats opposing pockets like short-term rentals. Patrick Surtain II remains the superstar of a secondary that also includes Riley Moss, Ja’Quan McMillian and Jahdae Barron. Offensive coordinators can pick a problem, but Denver has thoughtfully provided several.

There are warning labels. John Franklin-Myers is gone, defensive depth will be tested, and former quarterbacks coach Davis Webb is a first-time offensive coordinator and play caller. Denver also opens against Kansas City before facing five more 2025 playoff teams in a row. The schedule makers apparently watched the Broncos win 14 games and responded, “Cute. Do it again on expert mode.”

The record will slip because 14 wins and 12 comeback victories are difficult to reproduce. The underlying roster, however, is real. Denver has the best defense in the division, a deeper passing game and the fewest existential questions at quarterback. That is enough for a second straight crown.

2. Los Angeles Chargers: the beautiful experiment

Prediction: 11-6, wild card

The Chargers hired Mike McDaniel to coordinate Justin Herbert’s offense, and the pairing makes too much sense. Herbert possesses the arm talent of a video-game character created with every slider pushed to 99. McDaniel specializes in motion, spacing and making defenders run around before the snap like they just heard the boarding gate changed.

The weapons are interesting. Ladd McConkey is already Herbert’s precision instrument. Quentin Johnston has developed into a legitimate scoring threat. Tre’ Harris offers size, and rookie Brenen Thompson adds speed. At tight end, David Njoku joins an ascending Oronde Gadsden, who posted 664 yards as a rookie. McDaniel has enough ingredients to turn the offense into an episode of The Bear: fast, inventive and always one bad decision from everybody yelling.

Running back Omarion Hampton returns after an encouraging but injury-shortened rookie year. Keaton Mitchell supplies open-field juice. More importantly, tackles Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt are back after season-ending injuries in 2025. Herbert spent too much of last season playing with a fractured left hand and an offensive line that occasionally resembled five people waiting for an Uber.

The problem is the middle. Center Tyler Biadasz tore his ACL in August, leaving rookie Jake Slaughter in charge of the exchanges and protections. The Chargers may start new players at all three interior positions. That is a lot of trust to place between Herbert and the league’s best defensive tackles.

The defense finished in the top five last season and still has Derwin James, Khalil Mack and Tuli Tuipulotu, who delivered 13 sacks. New coordinator Chris O’Leary inherits a talented unit, but Jesse Minter’s departure removes a proven architect. Coaching transitions on both sides create upside and early-season volatility.

Jim Harbaugh has reached the playoffs in each of his first two seasons, but the Chargers have exited immediately both times. Until they win in January, the franchise remains the television show everyone insists gets amazing after the fourth season. I believe in the offense, the tackles and Herbert enough to predict 11 wins. I do not trust the interior line enough to hand them the division.

3. Kansas City Chiefs: back, all right?

Prediction: 10-7, wild-card bubble

The easiest prediction in football used to be “Mahomes and the Chiefs win the AFC West.” From 2016 through 2024, it worked every year. Then 2025 arrived like the surprise cancellation of a show everybody assumed would run forever.

Mahomes tore the ACL and LCL in his left knee during a Week 15 loss to the Chargers. His surgery was successful, and he was cleared for training camp, but clearance and normal Mahomes movement are different things. Kansas City opens the season against Denver, whose pass rush will offer the knee a very impolite customer-satisfaction survey.

The supporting cast is better. Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III gives Kansas City its most dangerous runner in years. A healthy Xavier Worthy restores deep speed. Rashee Rice provides tackle-breaking work underneath, while Travis Kelce returns for another season of finding the exact empty patch in every zone defense. The Chiefs also added Justin Fields behind Mahomes, an unusually relevant backup given the circumstances.

Defense is where the renovation gets risky. Chris Jones and George Karlaftis still anchor the front, while first-round tackle Peter Woods and edge rusher R Mason Thomas add young power. But Kansas City lost cornerbacks Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson plus safety Bryan Cook. L’Jarius Sneed returned, rookie Mansoor Delane arrived, and Steve Spagnuolo remains one of the league’s finest problem solvers. Even so, replacing that much secondary talent is not a simple copy-and-paste operation.

The optimistic case is obvious. Seven of Mahomes’ eight losses last season came by one score. Kansas City has a friendlier schedule, a better running game and a Hall of Fame quarterback with a laboratory full of motivational material. This could become Top Gun: Maverick, the legacy sequel that reminds everybody why the original worked.

My hesitation is equally obvious: mobility matters to Mahomes, the secondary is less proven, and the division has two complete playoff rosters. Ten wins would represent a strong rebound without pretending that a repaired knee and a reconstructed defense are merely offseason footnotes. Never count out Mahomes. Just do not count the 2024 Chiefs when predicting the 2026 Chiefs.

4. Las Vegas Raiders: another reboot, but this one has a script

Prediction: 7-10

The Raiders fired Pete Carroll after one 3-14 season and hired Klint Kubiak, whose Seattle offense just completed a Super Bowl run. It is yet another reset, but at least this one arrives with a coherent plan: improve the offensive line, establish the run and avoid throwing the rookie quarterback into a volcano.

Kirk Cousins will start Week 1 while No. 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza learns behind him. Cousins is the bridge quarterback, which in Las Vegas means he is being asked to connect two casinos while somebody is still pouring the concrete. The Raiders reportedly do not expect Mendoza to start before November. That is sensible. A franchise can ruin a quarterback much faster than it can develop one.

Ashton Jeanty nearly reached 1,000 rushing yards as a rookie despite playing in a broken offense. He enters the season managing an ankle sprain, but the long-term pairing with Kubiak is exciting. Brock Bowers is already one of football’s most destructive tight ends. Jack Bech, Jalen Nailor, Tre Tucker and Dont’e Thornton form an athletic receiving group, although there is no proven alpha outside Bowers.

The offensive line may be the sneaky strength. Tyler Linderbaum joins Kolton Miller and Jackson Powers-Johnson, giving Kubiak a legitimate foundation for his run game. If Cousins receives time and Jeanty’s ankle cooperates, this offense can move from “call the authorities” to “annoyingly competent” in one season.

Defensively, Maxx Crosby remains the sun around which everything orbits. Kwity Paye and Malcolm Koonce help the edge group, while Nakobe Dean, Quay Walker, Taron Johnson, Eric Stokes and Jeremy Chinn give the back seven considerably more credibility. There is speed and recognizable talent now. There is also youth, injury history and not enough depth to survive many bad Sundays.

The Raiders will be improved. Seven wins may not inspire a parade on the Strip, but doubling last year’s total and developing Mendoza would count as a successful first season. This is the sixth Batman reboot, except the audience is cautiously optimistic because the new director appears to understand lighting.

The games that decide it

Denver versus Kansas City: The Week 1 meeting immediately tests Mahomes’ movement against the league’s nastiest pass rush. It also tells us whether Denver has become the hunted without becoming nervous about it.

Denver versus Los Angeles: McDaniel’s motion against Denver’s man coverage is the division’s chess match. If the Chargers protect the interior, Herbert can force the Broncos to defend every inch of grass.

Kansas City versus Los Angeles: Mahomes and Herbert remain appointment viewing, but the more important matchup may be Kansas City’s rebuilt secondary against the Chargers’ new spacing concepts.

Everybody versus Las Vegas: The Raiders are not ready to win the division, but Crosby, Jeanty and Bowers are exactly the sort of stars who can steal one game and rearrange the tiebreakers.

Final verdict

Denver wins the AFC West because it owns the division’s most dependable advantage: a championship-level defense that does not require projection. The Chargers finish close behind because McDaniel and Herbert should produce some glorious Sundays. Kansas City rebounds because Mahomes plus competence is still a terrifying formula, but the knee and the new secondary make a full restoration difficult to predict. Las Vegas becomes respectable, which is the first required step before becoming dangerous.

Final order: Broncos, Chargers, Chiefs, Raiders.

Confidence level: medium. Emotional preparedness for Mahomes to make this entire prediction look foolish by Halloween: extremely high.

Roster and injury information checked September 7, 2026. Records are predictions, not a request to send your bookie a screenshot.

Sources

Claude

Montanimation Studios // The Sports Desk (Still Unlicensed)

AFC West 2026: A Halfway House for Demoted Coordinators, and One Very Expensive Knee

The dynasty is over, the Broncos are the champs, the Chargers broke Patrick Mahomes with their bare hands, and Pete Carroll is now coaching a high school all-star game in Hawaii. Everything is fine.

Filed September 5, 2026 · Half Art. Half Tech. All Shenanigans.

Last week we did the NFC West and found a division haunted by an electrical substation. The AFC West has no supernatural element whatsoever and is somehow worse off for it. What it has instead is a decade of accumulated dominance that collapsed in a single afternoon, and four franchises standing around the wreckage arguing over the good parts.

For nine consecutive years this division was a formality. Kansas City won it. You could set a calendar to it. Then, in Week 15 of the 2025 season, the Los Angeles Chargers beat the Chiefs 16-13, ended a ten-year playoff streak and a nine-year division-title streak, and, in the closing minutes of the same game, Patrick Mahomes tore the ACL and LCL in his left knee.

One game. The streak, the season, and the quarterback. The Chargers did not just win a football game, they performed a hostile takeover of an entire era in about three hours.

So here is your 2026 AFC West: the Broncos are the reigning champions, the Chiefs are running on a rebuilt joint, the Chargers are trying to prove December was a thesis instead of an accident, and the Raiders are the Raiders, which we will get to, because it is spectacular.

First, the Thing Nobody Has Named Yet

This division is a halfway house for guys who used to have a bigger job

Look at who is actually calling plays in the AFC West this fall. Every single one of these people was recently something else, and in three of four cases, something bigger.

Kansas City: Eric Bieniemy is back, replacing Matt Nagy. Bieniemy left Kansas City to be a coordinator in Washington, then went to college, and has now completed the full loop back to the building where it worked. ESPN framed it as a “return home.” It is the coaching equivalent of moving back in with your parents at 56 and having it be, honestly, the correct call.
Los Angeles: Mike McDaniel, until recently the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, is now Jim Harbaugh’s offensive coordinator. A head coach took a demotion to work for a guy whose entire personality is khakis and enthusiasm. This is the most fascinating coaching marriage in football and I would watch a documentary about it in real time.
Denver: Sean Payton fired Joe Lombardi and promoted Davis Webb from quarterbacks coach. Davis Webb was an active NFL backup quarterback approximately fifteen minutes ago. He is now running the offense of a 14-3 team.
Las Vegas: Klint Kubiak is the head coach. He was Seattle’s offensive coordinator last year. You may recall from last week’s NFC West piece that the Seahawks won Super Bowl LX and then immediately replaced their coordinator. This is because he got promoted out of the building. Kubiak won a ring in February and got a head coaching job out of it, which is the single cleanest career move anyone in this sport made all year.

And the man Kubiak replaced? Pete Carroll was fired after one season with the league’s worst record. Four months later, at 74 years old, he resurfaced as a head coach of the 2027 Polynesian Bowl, a high school all-star game in Hawaii, alongside Mack Brown. His stated reasoning: “I happen to like that island and we’ve spent a lot of time there so it feels like going home to me.”

Genuinely, Though

Pete Carroll got fired from the worst job in football and immediately took a gig coaching teenagers in Hawaii and sounded happier than he has in three years. Everybody in this division is chasing a Lombardi and the guy who got fired is the only one who appears to be at peace. There is a lesson in there and none of us are going to learn it.

Denver Broncos

Defending division champions, a sentence we have not typed since Peyton Manning had feeling in his fingertips

Denver went 14-3 and won the AFC West, ending Kansas City’s reign. Fourteen wins, behind a quarterback drafted out of Oregon and a defense that hits like a repossession crew.

Then the front office did the thing that separates a nice story from a real contender. On March 18, Denver sent first, third, and fourth round picks to Miami for Jaylen Waddle. Bo Nix now has an actual burner, and Davis Webb’s Air Raid background suggests they intend to use him like one instead of like a decoration.

The defense is the identity and it stayed intact. Vance Joseph is back. Justin Strnad re-signed for three years and $18 million, Alex Singleton for two and $15.5 million. They lost John Franklin-Myers to Tennessee, which stings.

The Bo Nix question is the whole season. Sean Payton has been unusually direct, saying Nix will be “measured by wins” after another round of national rankings left him off the list. That is a coach defending his quarterback and applying pressure to him in the same breath. Nix won fourteen games and still cannot get a seat at the table. Fine. Bring the receipts.

They open Monday night at Kansas City on September 14, on ESPN and ABC, against Patrick Mahomes in his first game back. The league did not schedule that. The league staged it.

Verdict: The books have Denver at 33 percent for the division, essentially a three-way coin flip with Kansas City and Los Angeles. The defense is real, the schedule is brutal early, and this is a team that has already proven it can win the hard way.

Kansas City Chiefs

We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have roughly nine months.

Kansas City missed the playoffs for the first time in a decade. Seven one-score losses. A 5-3 start that dissolved into losing five of six. Gardner Minshew came in for Mahomes and then also got hurt. By the end they were down to quarterbacks whose names required a Google search. It was not a slow decline, it was a trapdoor.

Andy Reid is back, and here is a fact that will age you into dust: following Mike Tomlin’s resignation in Pittsburgh and Baltimore firing John Harbaugh, Reid is now the longest-tenured head coach in the NFL. An entire generation of sideline gravitas got liquidated inside one calendar year and Andy Reid is the last man standing, holding a cheeseburger and a headset.

The knee is the story. Mahomes tore two ligaments, had them repaired in Dallas by Dr. Dan Cooper, and was given a nine-month window. He has not missed a practice since July, sat out the entire preseason, and is on track to start Monday night. His words: “It’s nine months. It’s the amount of time they said from the beginning, that if I did everything the right way, I would be ready to play Week 1.”

“His mindset is a little different than most. He’s a pretty fast healer that way.”
Andy Reid, describing the most expensive asset in professional sports like a golden retriever

Around him, the roster got interesting. Travis Kelce re-signed for a fourteenth season. L’Jarius Sneed came back from Tennessee. They drafted LSU corner Mansoor Delane sixth overall and then took quarterback Garrett Nussmeier with the 249th pick, which is the roster-building equivalent of buying a fire extinguisher after the fire.

And here is my favorite transaction in the entire league: Kansas City signed Kenneth Walker III. The Super Bowl LX MVP. Seattle let the guy who won them a championship walk, and he landed in Kansas City to hand the ball off to a quarterback returning from a torn ACL. If you read last week’s NFC West piece, that is where he went. Mystery solved. It only cost the Seahawks their entire running game.

Verdict: 34 percent for the division, the narrow favorite, which feels like the market refusing to fully believe the dynasty is done. Bieniemy is a real upgrade in play-calling but the skill positions are thinner than the reputation suggests. Everything is the knee. All of it is the knee.

Los Angeles Chargers

Sixteen years without a division title, and they just killed a dynasty on the way to not winning one

Two straight 11-6 seasons. Two straight playoff appearances. And zero AFC West titles since 2009, which is a level of sustained near-miss that stops being a coincidence and starts being a personality.

That is the Chargers’ entire deal. In Week 15 they walked into the most consequential game of the decade, beat Kansas City, ended the streak, ended the season, and knocked the best quarterback alive out of football for nine months. Then they went 11-6 and did not win the division anyway. Nobody executes a moral victory with more technical precision than this franchise.

Jim Harbaugh is entering year three, and the big swing was hiring Mike McDaniel to run the offense. The theory is straightforward: Justin Herbert has one of the great arms in the sport and has spent his career in systems that ask him to be a fire hose when he should be a scalpel. McDaniel builds offenses where receivers are open before the ball leaves the hand. If that clicks, Herbert finally gets the MVP conversation people have been promising him since 2021.

On defense they traded safety Alohi Gilman to Baltimore for edge rusher Odafe Oweh and used their first-round pick on linebacker Akheem Mesidor. They open September 13 against Arizona at SoFi, which, given what we said about the Cardinals last week, is roughly a bye week with a kickoff time.

Verdict: 32 percent, the third of three coin flips, and the analytical case is that a brutal mid-season stretch against seven consecutive playoff teams is where this gets decided. This is the best Chargers roster in fifteen years. It is also the Chargers. Both things are load-bearing.

Las Vegas Raiders

Tom Brady is running a football team, which is exactly as strange as it sounds

The Raiders went 3-14, their second straight season under five wins, and fired Pete Carroll after a single year. Then owner Mark Davis announced that minority owner Tom Brady would help lead the head coaching search, alongside GM John Spytek.

Sit with that. Tom Brady, simultaneously a broadcaster, a minority owner, and a man with a financial stake in games he calls, spent his January conducting head coaching interviews. The Ringer’s headline was “This Time, Tom Brady Is Calling the Shots.” We have fully arrived at the multi-hyphenate era of professional sports and the league appears completely relaxed about it.

They landed on Klint Kubiak, fresh off a Super Bowl as Seattle’s coordinator, who brought in Andrew Janocko as OC and promoted Rob Leonard to run the defense. Then, holding the first overall pick, they drafted Fernando Mendoza out of Indiana. A franchise quarterback, taken first, by a team advised in part by the most decorated quarterback in history.

The supporting cast is thinner than it should be. They traded Jakobi Meyers to Jacksonville, which for a rookie quarterback is a hostile act. Ashton Jeanty is entering year two and remains the most fun player on the roster by a wide margin. Their opener is September 13 at home against Miami, a Dolphins team that just shipped Jaylen Waddle to a division rival, so it is two rebuilds in a trench coat.

Verdict: Five percent for the division, 16 percent for the playoffs. But Kubiak is a legitimate hire, Mendoza is a legitimate prospect, and Jeanty is legitimately electric. This is the first Raiders rebuild in a decade that appears to have been designed on purpose.

The Predictions

Screenshot these. Be cruel to me in January. I have made peace with it.

Finish	Team	Record	The One-Line Reason
1	Denver Broncos	12-5	Best defense in the division and now an actual passing game to go with it
2	Kansas City Chiefs	11-6	Wild card, and one round further than anyone expects, because it is him
3	Los Angeles Chargers	10-7	Wild card, McDaniel works, the mid-season gauntlet costs them the division again
4	Las Vegas Raiders	6-11	Double their win total, lose a lot of close ones, and that is genuine progress

Division winner: Denver Broncos. I keep trying to talk myself out of it and the math keeps refusing. Denver won fourteen games with a defense that travels and an offense that was actively holding it back, and then they went and fixed the offense. The Chiefs are a healthy Mahomes away from being right back on top, and “a healthy Mahomes” is doing an enormous amount of load-bearing work in a sentence about a man nine months removed from two torn ligaments.

The call for the year: all three of Denver, Kansas City, and Los Angeles make the playoffs, which means the AFC West sends three teams to January for the first time in a long time. And then the Chiefs, seeded fifth or sixth, go on a run, because there is no scenario in which Patrick Mahomes returns from a torn ACL, gets left for dead by every preview in America, and does not use it. Kansas City reaches the AFC Championship Game and loses it, and everyone spends February arguing about whether the dynasty is back or finally, actually over.

The Bit

The AFC West is now a division where the reigning champs promoted their quarterbacks coach, the Chargers employ a former head coach as a coordinator, the Raiders hired a Super Bowl coordinator and are advised by a broadcaster, and the winningest franchise of the era is being carried by a 36-year-old tight end, a running back Seattle did not want, and one surgically reconstructed knee. There is no substation here. There is just a lot of very expensive hope.

Three quick ones:

Justin Herbert throws for 4,800 yards and does not win the division. He will be third in MVP voting and first in the hearts of people who like watching a football get thrown correctly.
Kenneth Walker III scores a touchdown against Seattle and the broadcast will cut to a Seahawks executive doing math on a napkin.
Fernando Mendoza wins exactly one game he has no business winning, in prime time, and Raiders fans will spend an entire week insisting the rebuild is over. It will not be. It will still be fun.

Broncos at Chiefs, Monday, September 14, 6:15 Mountain, ESPN and ABC. Mahomes’ first snap in nine months, against the team that took his division, in a stadium that has not hosted a playoff game in over a year. If you only watch one football game this month, it is that one.

Nothing about this is normal. All of it is football. Let’s go.

Sources

// Montanimation Studios // Half Art. Half Tech. All Shenanigans. //

3 Ai Agents pick the 2026 AFC West

Google Gemini

AFC West 2026 Preview: Dynasty Fatigue, Mile-High Heat, and Harbaugh’s Lab

1. Denver Broncos: Sean Payton’s Mile-High Empire

2. Kansas City Chiefs: The Empire Strikes Back (Hopefully)

3. Los Angeles Chargers: Harbaugh’s Heavy-Metal Lab

4. Las Vegas Raiders: Welcome to the Mendoza Era

AFC West Projected Finish

ChatGPT

The quick prediction

1. Denver Broncos: defending the mountain

2. Los Angeles Chargers: the beautiful experiment

3. Kansas City Chiefs: back, all right?

4. Las Vegas Raiders: another reboot, but this one has a script

The games that decide it

Final verdict

Sources

Claude

AFC West 2026: A Halfway House for Demoted Coordinators, and One Very Expensive Knee

First, the Thing Nobody Has Named Yet

This division is a halfway house for guys who used to have a bigger job

Denver Broncos

Defending division champions, a sentence we have not typed since Peyton Manning had feeling in his fingertips

Kansas City Chiefs

We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have roughly nine months.

Los Angeles Chargers

Sixteen years without a division title, and they just killed a dynasty on the way to not winning one

Las Vegas Raiders

Tom Brady is running a football team, which is exactly as strange as it sounds

The Predictions

Screenshot these. Be cruel to me in January. I have made peace with it.

Sources

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