I have some personal news. I have finally given in and acquired a subscription to Pro Football Focus, so get ready for a steady stream of stats from the site over the next few months.

Now, I understand the people that don't like PFF or think that certain writers over-index on their numbers and metrics. I'm not going to treat it like it's the end-all be-all, but there's a lot of information in here that I haven't been able to access until recently and I'm having fun digging through it.

One of the things that struck me was PFF's simple "power rankings" that tries to rank NFL teams from best to worst, using mostly their own metrics and numbers to make that determination. Actually, what struck me wasn't the power rankings themselves, but where the 2025 Los Angeles Chargers ranked in them.

In addition to a power ranking of the teams by performance, there is also a ranking by starting QB and a ranking by strength of schedule. These are all very interesting!

Let us first take a look at their ranking of the top 5 QBs in the NFL this season:

1. Patrick Mahomes / Lamar Jackson / Josh Allen
4. Justin Herbert
5. Dak Prescott

You know what? That's a pretty good ranking of the starting QBs in the NFL! ANd it confirms my suspicions that Herbert is just below that top tier.

I find the typical "strength of schedule" stat to be pretty silly. It's usually done by winning percentage, with wins against your opponent making your strength of schedule technically weaker and losing against your opponent making your strength of schedule stronger.

Luckily, since PFF has their own team ratings, it's based more on the on-field performance and less about the outcome itself. Semantics, I know.

Anyway, the Chargers had the 18th toughest strength of schedule in 2025. With games against the Raiders (2), Giants, Commanders, Dolphins and Titans....it's easy to see why the Chargers strength of schedule was slightly below average.

Okay, first, I'll show you what caught my eye the first time I looked at this:

You can see from this that the Chargers were ranked as the 12th best team in the NFL in 2025 according to PFF. They also finished ahead of the 14-3 Broncos.

These rankings ended up playing out as you might imagine in the playoffs. The Super Bowl is a matchup between the #1 team and the #4 team in the league. Each of them beat the teams in between them to get to this stage of the playoffs. I'm pointing this out to say that they were, overall, seemingly accurate.

The two teams that finished higher in the rankings that Los Angeles that did not end up in the playoffs? The Detroit Lions and Baltimore Ravens, two teams that did seem to be better than their record said this past season.

I feel pretty comfortable with the idea that the Chargers were the 12th best team in the NFL during the 2025 regular season. I'm also fairly confident that they'll be even better next season, if they can get some better injury luck.