I have a confession to make. I have absolutely no idea how good, or how bad, the Los Angeles Chargers are.

Are they the team that went 3-0 to start the season with convincing wins over the rest of the AFC West? 

Or are they the team that has gone 1-3 since that start, with embarrassing losses to the Giants, Commanders and Colts?

What are we to make of the Chargers' Week 6 win in Miami, a game that the Dolphins had in hand after taking the lead with 46 seconds left in the 4th quarter? That's a 1-6 Dolphins team, by the way, that seems absolutely ready to fire their head coach and move on from their franchise QB.

The thing about the Chargers being the Schrödinger's cat of NFL teams is that you can talk yourself into them being anything you want. They have a winning record while dealing with a catastrophic amount of injuries, but they also haven't looked like a good team in a month.

Let's split these two arguments out and see which one is more convincing:

The Chargers are a Good Team

The Los Angeles Chargers were a good team, earlier in the season, and they will be again later in the season. They just need their defense to get a little better and healthier and they need more contributions from their running game., which should happen when Omarion Hampton returns from an ankle injury.

In their Week 7 game loss to the Colts, the Chargers running backs totaled a whopping 23 rushing yards on 10 carries. Part of that is because LA was down the whole game and chasing a high-octane Colts offense, but another part of that is because Kimani Vidal is not ready to be a starting RB on a competitive NFL team and because the offensive line is missing key pieces that will eventually return from injury.

Justin Herbert and the receivers have proven to be a powerful combination that should only do more damage when the line gets better and the defense has to respect the run.

The Chargers are Not a Good Team

The Los Angeles Chargers are not a good team. Their offense doesn't score enough, they turn the ball over too often, and the defense has looked like Swiss cheese against competent NFL offenses (including 400+ yards allowed in each of the last two weeks).

The Chiefs defense has been dramatically better since their Week 1 loss to Los Angeles, winning four of their last five games. The Broncos have figured out their offense since a Week 3 loss to the Chargers, winning their last four games. The Raiders are, somewhat surprisingly, not nearly as good as everyone thought they would be.

Two of the Chargers' four wins thus far have come against teams that currently have losing records. And of the Chargers' remaining ten games, only two are against teams with losing records. We will, eventually, figure out if they're good enough to beat the others on the schedule.