AFC West

What went right?

When considering the AFC West from a fantasy football perspective, it’s hard to ignore the historic season that Raiders rookie tight end Brock Bowers had. Bowers was the only AFC player to finish inside the top-five fantasy performers in the 2024 season at their respective position. He was the TE1 in half-PPR, with 206.7 fantasy points, gathered from 112 catches on 153 targets for 1,194 yards and four touchdowns. He was the lone bright spot coming out of Las Vegas all season long. He finished as the weekly TE6 or better in 9-of-17 games, making a difference in fantasy matchups all year long. Rookies were the talk of the town all over the AFC West in fantasy football, with each team finding offensive difference-makers from the most recent NFL Draft. In Denver, we saw rookie QB Bo Nix flash some incredible potential after he and the Broncos overcame a slow start to the season. Nix wound up the most important fantasy QB in this division, which nobody could’ve guessed heading into last season, finishing as the fantasy QB7 on the season. He also threw to a trio of complementary rookie WRs, all flashing something at different stages of the season. In Los Angeles, rookie slot wideout Ladd McConkey got hot in the back half of the year, and wound up finishing as the fantasy WR11, dominating targets from Justin Herbert in the Chargers’ passing offense. Kansas City also had a strong finish from rookie WR Xavier Worthy, who helped teams win their fantasy league after submitting three stellar performances in the final three weeks of the fantasy season. Broncos WR Courtland Sutton also had another great season, winding up the WR13 overall in 2024 and catching six touchdowns across his last seven games. Chiefs TE Travis Kelce finished as the TE6 after being good for much of the season, however, he finished as the weekly TE12 or worse in five-straight games to close the season, before he finished as the TE3 in Week 17. Justin Herbert and Patrick Mahomes both felt like they were underperforming at times this season, but both somehow still managed a QB11 and QB12 overall finishes respectively. The running backs were middling in the division, but headlining the pack was a career-resurgence from Chargers RB J.K. Dobbins, who had the best peak among AFC West ball-carriers. Shoutout to his teammate, WR Quentin Johnston for bouncing back from one of the most disappointing 2023 rookie campaigns and having a stellar sophomore year, finishing as the fantasy WR37 on the season and hauling in eight touchdowns.

What went wrong?

There was a lot that felt underwhelming out of this division, but other areas were just predictably bad in 2024 out of the AFC West. Starting with the unfortunate, a couple injuries plagued the outlook of this division early in the season. Most notably, the Chiefs lost WR Hollywood Brown before the start of the season, lost starting RB Isiah Pacheco after a couple weeks, and WR Rashee Rice not long after. While Patrick Mahomes was the QB12 on the season, he only had five top-12 QB weekly finishes under his belt in 16 starts throughout the season. Zamir White was a catastrophic failure out of Las Vegas, being drafted as the RB24 overall in drafts ahead of the 2024 season, and finishing as the RB88 in eight appearances. There was a lot of turmoil for the Raiders this season, as the Davante Adams experience came to an abrupt end after appearing in just three games for Vegas this season before nursing an injury and requesting a trade to the New York Jets. There were a couple of positional groups in the division that are among league’s worst, namely the Broncos’ tight ends and running backs, and the Raiders’ quarterbacks and running backs. These teams fielded some of the most frustratingly bad and unpredictable fantasy rotations in the 2024 season. The Broncos basically had no true starting tight end all season, after Greg Dulcich came crashing down and out after some drop-filled cameos in the beginning of the year. The Deandre Hopkins trade didn’t exactly pan out for the Chiefs, aside from a couple of touchdown grabs. The Chiefs ultimately never really had to put their foot on the gas during the regular season, and that emerged as a significant downside when drafting aging fantasy assets that play for the Chiefs. Ultimately, it felt like this division left some meat on the bone in 2024, but 2025 could see things cranked all the way up to 11.

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