National Pundit Unloads on Analyst for His AFC West Prediction

The NFL will release its 2025 schedule on Wednesday night and, nearly 16 weeks before the Chiefs play their first game, there’s fireworks.

National pundit Nick Wright went scorched earth on FS1 colleague Colin Cowherd last week for picking Jim Harbaugh, Justin Herbert and the Los Angeles Chargers to become the first team since 2017, other than the Chiefs, to win the AFC West. Wright also ripped Cowherd for his other seven NFL division predictions.

“Do you realize what you did there?” Wright asked Cowherd last week on The Herd. “You did two things there. One is, you have seven of the eight division winners from last year winning their division again – with the one exception being a team whose quarterback has won the division every year of his career and is, and this is not a misquote, is a career 35-5 against divisional opponents.”

That quarterback is Patrick Mahomes, who enters his eighth year as the Chiefs’ starter. The last time Kansas City didn’t win the AFC West was three years before that, was 2015. The club bids for its 10th straight division title in 2025.

At least Cowherd picked the Chiefs as an AFC wild-card team, along with Arizona, New England and others. Cut Cowherd some slack because win totals are difficult to predict, but believing the Chiefs will win the same number of games as the Cardinals and Patriots?

“That doesn't feel dumb to you?" asked Wright, who hosts FS1's First Things First. "I hate to use that word but doesn't, just on its face, that feel like, ‘You know what? Maybe I need to recalibrate this one just a touch, just a touch, if I have the Chiefs in the same bucket as the Cardinals and the Patriots?’

“Every other division winner earns the benefit of the doubt, except for a team that won 17 games last year and has been to three straight Super Bowls, but they looked bad in the Super Bowl. How did the Chargers look in their Super Bowl, which is called the wild-card round, when your golden boy Herbert threw more picks than he did all year?”

The Athletic reported last month that Kansas City was the No. 1 franchise in consideration as the Chargers’ designated opponent for the league’s second game in São Paulo, Brazil. The winner of the first contest in that city, Philadelphia, in 2024, went on to beat the Chiefs in the Super Bowl.

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