AFC North, AFC West, Baltimore Ravens, Los Angeles Chargers

2018 AFC Wild Card Round LA Chargers @ Baltimore Ravens

AFC Wild Card Game North v West

Is this the year when Phillip Rivers finally gets his hands on a SuperBowl? He is the third member of the exclusive 2004 Quarterback club which has to be one of the strongest top 11’s ever, where QB is concerned having served up, in addition, Eli Manning and Ben Rothelsberger both of whom have two rings each, and numerous postseason appearances. The draft ended up a bit of a farce with Eli – picked no one by the Chargers effectively refusing to play for them and ending up being transferred to the Giants. Worked out well enough for NY.

Anyway, after a few years of massive underachievement, the Chargers ended up 12-4 and are two wins away from a place in the Superbowl. They started off 1-2 but had games against the Chiefs & Rams in that stretch, and thereafter they went 10-1 with the only loss being by one point against Denver. They did lose at home to Baltimore in week 16, 22-10 but were driving for the win until a Melvin Gordon fumble was returned 62 yards for the game-sealing TD. They struggled a bit that day against Lamar Jackson’s unconventional offensive style and of course the fierce Baltimore defence, however, they will have had plenty of time to analyse the tape and it won’t come as a surprise this time. They finished the season with an easy win in Denver and although they had the same record as the Chiefs, they finished second based on divisional games.

Baltimore recovered from being 4-5 at one stage to win the AFC North 10-6, thanks largely to having a pretty easy run in. However, they did give the Chiefs quite a game and of course, beat the Chargers in that run. The switch from Joe Flacco at QB helped and Lamar Jackson’s mobility has been a big factor. Ironically he probably had the worst game of his short career against the Chargers only completing 54.5% of his passes and picking up 39 yards rushing (27 of these coming on one attempt).

Baltimore start as 3 point favourites largely thanks to home-field advantage, however we think this could be the year where Philip Rivers finally gets to the big one and although it should be close and probably low scoring we are going with LA to progress.

LA Chargers to win 20-10

Leave a Reply

Skip to toolbar