The
AFC West is a division of the
National Football League's
American Football Conference,
formed in 1960 as the
American
Football League's Western Division. In 1970, it became the AFC
West as a result of the
AFL-NFL
merger. The new NFL was aligned into six divisions (two
conferences of three divisions each), with each division being a
successor to an earlier division in either the AFL or NFL. The
original AFL West had four members - the
Dallas Texans (which moved to Kansas City
in 1963 as the Chiefs),
Denver
Broncos,
Los Angeles Chargers
(which moved to San Diego in 1961) and
Oakland Raiders. These four teams have
remained in the AFL/AFC West since its inception, and are currently
the only teams in the division.
When the Raiders played in Los
Angeles
from 1982 to 1994, they remained in the AFC
West.
The
Cincinnati Bengals played
their first two seasons in the AFL West, moving to the AFC Central
(formerly the
NFL Century
Division, now the
AFC North) in
1970.
When the
Seattle Seahawks and the
Tampa Bay Buccaneers began play
in 1976, the Buccaneers were put into the AFC West and the Seahawks
were put into the
NFC West. After one year,
Seattle was moved into the AFC West and Tampa Bay was moved into
the
NFC Central. The Seahawks played in
the AFC West until the 2002 re-alignment, when they were put back
into the NFC West, thus restoring the pre-1976 alignment.
Each of the four AFC West teams won a division title in the first
four years of the realignment -
Oakland in 2002,
Kansas City in 2003,
San Diego in 2004 and
Denver in 2005. It is the
only one of the eight NFL divisions to have all of its teams win
titles in the first four seasons of the North-East-West-South
format.
ESPN's
Chris Berman
often calls this division the "AFC Smythe" due to its geographical
similarity to the old
Smythe
Division of the
NHL, now
known as the
Pacific
Division. Ironically, the
Kansas
City Scouts moved to Denver to become the
Colorado Rockies in 1976; both the
Kansas City and Denver incarnations of the franchise played in the
Smythe.
The Rockies moved to East Rutherford,
New Jersey
in 1982 and became the New Jersey Devils (playing in the Meadowlands
Sports Complex
, where the NFL's two New York City area teams
play).
In recent
years, the division is often cited as one of the NFL's "Toughest
Divisions" due partially to the home-field advantages of Invesco
Field
, Arrowhead Stadium
, Qualcomm
Stadium
and the Oakland Coliseum 
, although in 2008
the division was the NFL's weakest since the AFC Central in
1985 by sending the San Diego
Chargers to the playoffs as division winners with an 8-8 record
while the New England Patriots
missed out at 11-5 after losing out on tiebreakers for both the
AFC East and the wild-card. Although, it should
also be noted that the Chargers beat the Patriots 30-10 in their
Week 6 match-up.
Division champions
- !The Oakland Raiders
and Kansas City Chiefs tied for
the regular season division title at 12-2-0. The Raiders won the
ensuing playoff game to represent the West in the AFL Championship
Game.
- #A players' strike in 1982 reduced the regular
season to nine games. Thus, the league used a special 16-team
playoff tournament just for this year. Division standings were
ignored, the Los Angeles Raiders had the best record of the
division teams.
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