A lot of sports franchises, not just in the NFL but including the NFL, have a greatest player ever. A player that you immediately think of when that team name is mentioned.

Tom Brady is the greatest Patriot ever. Michael Jordan is the greatest Bull ever. Tony Gwynn is the greatest Padre ever.

As time passes and more super-athletes enter the league, these legacies will eventually fade. On a long enough timeline, an obvious answer will always emerge for every team when the question is asked "Who is their best player ever?"

But, that being said, I wondered today who the greatest Chargers player of all-time was and I wasn't sure what my answer was. I eventually figured it out, but let's talk about how I got there.

For as long as I can remember, the answer to this question was quickly and easily Junior Seau. There was no debate, there was no discussion, and there was no disagreement. If you wanted to call him Mr. Charger, I don't think anyone would've minded (except Junior, who would rather you call him Buddy).

What led to me writing this today was that I wasn't sure that the answer would be Junior Seau anymore. He hasn't played for the Chargers in 24 years and a lot of winning happened since, it makes sense that there would be challengers to his 13 years in San Diego.

I'm not looking for the best a Chargers player ever was, or the best season ever by a Chargers player, but I will take this moment to say the best season I ever saw from a player was LaDainian Tomlinson's 2006 MVP-winning season. But that certainly does not make him the best Chargers player ever.

I wanted to put some metrics behind this, it's not meant to just be my own opinion here, so I dug around looking for a season-long cumulative stat that was meant to capture a player's value. What I landed on was "Approximate Value" (or AV), which is an imperfect stat but useful for our brain teaser.

By adding together the AV of each season for each player on the Chargers roster, we can get a good idea of how they compare to one another in terms of total value to the organization.

Using a stat like this, what matters here is both quality of play and longevity. A player with 3 seasons with an average AV of 5 will have a total of 15 and outrank a player that put up a single season AV of 12. Make sense?

When I looked up the all-time AV leaders for the Chargers, the first thing I noticed was Junior Seau at #2 (with an AV of 168, just a smidge about Fouts' 163). That told me that I was right to wonder if the answer was still Junior Seau.

Not only is the answer to the question Philip Rivers, but he blew the other guys away with a total AV of 205. He also played in 28 more games with the Chargers than either one of them, which help explains the gap.

So, until the next time we look at the list and adjust for the passage of time, Philip Rivers is the greatest Chargers player ever.