Ranking the 2021 AFC West LBs: Where do the Raiders rank

Ranking the 2021 AFC West LBs: Where do the Raiders rank

1. Los Angeles Chargers

The Chargers get the number one spot on this list mostly because they had the most legit player this past season.  As a second-round pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, the Chargers drafted linebacker Kenneth Murray out of the University of Oklahoma, and I legitimately thought that he wasn’t going to turn out to be a player.

Well if his rookie season showed us anything, it’s that he has a chance to be pretty good, and that is worrisome for the rest of the division.  Having to deal with the talent that they have at the other levels with Joey Bosa on the defensive line, and the plethora of talent they seem to find on the defensive secondary, the Raiders really didn’t need the Chargers to go ahead and find a real deal linebacker.

Murray finished the 2020 season with 107 total tackles with 68 of them being solo.  The rest of their linebackers are not the most intimidating group in the world, with players like Kyzir White, Drue Tranquill, and Uchenna Nwosu, but if you really want to be technical with it, you could include Bosa in this list as a rushing outside linebacker, but that just seems like overkill to me at this point.

Las Vegas Raiders: Derek Carr has no shortage of weapons in 2021

The Las Vegas Raiders did a nice job surrounding Derek Carr with weapons heading into 2021, making this offense a potentially dangerous one.

The Chargers hit a home run in the 2020 NFL Draft with Murray, and quarterback Justin Herbert, making them a formidable opponent for Las Vegas in 2021.