One team is coming off the best debut a new coaching staff could ask for. The other just turned in one of the ugliest openers in the league. That contrast is what makes Week 2 at SoFi Stadium so interesting — and it's an early measuring-stick game in a division that could once again come down to the tiebreakers.

Two teams, two very different Week 1s

The Raiders looked like a different team under Klint Kubiak in a 27-13 win over Miami — patient on offense, relentless up front on defense, clean in the kicking game. Even Kubiak wasn't fully satisfied. "Not happy with how we played the game offensively in that second half, and we have a lot to get better at," he said afterward, pointing at a fourth quarter in which Las Vegas didn't add to its lead.

The Chargers, meanwhile, face a much bigger version of that same problem. Jim Harbaugh's team was stunned at home, 26-14, by an Arizona team most people expected them to beat comfortably. Justin Herbert threw a touchdown to Ladd McConkey and Omarion Hampton scored on the ground, but the Chargers allowed 393 total yards, had a punt blocked and returned for a score, and couldn't put Arizona away once it got close in the fourth quarter. It was, by the Chargers' own description, a sloppy performance from a team that entered the year with real expectations after Harbaugh's first season.

That gap in momentum is exactly why the line has moved toward Los Angeles — Vegas has the Chargers favored, and understandably so on paper. But "understandably so on paper" is also what a lot of people said about the Raiders-Dolphins line last week.

A shaky debut for the new play-caller

Some of the Chargers' Week 1 problems trace directly to the press box. Los Angeles hired Mike McDaniel — fired by Miami in January after the Dolphins finished 7-10 — as its offensive coordinator this offseason, and his first call sheet in charge of Justin Herbert was rough. McDaniel has installed a faster, shotgun-heavy system built around quick game and layered concepts, and he's reworked Herbert's footwork to fit it. There were flashes — Herbert connected with Quentin Johnston for a 65-yard touchdown off exactly the kind of layered shot concept McDaniel is known for — but there was also a costly turnover on a Herbert-to-Hampton exchange that flipped the field, and the offense as a whole never found any rhythm in a game the Chargers were expected to win comfortably. Former Chargers defensive tackle Breiden Fehoko didn't hold back afterward, saying the performance "sums up Mike McDaniel in a nutshell" and putting a 7-10 record on the table for the season.

There's a pointed irony here for Raiders fans: the team Las Vegas just beat to open the season is the same team McDaniel used to coach, and the identity crisis he left behind in Miami looks like it followed him to Los Angeles, at least for one week. If Las Vegas's front four can turn Herbert's timing-based passing game into second-and-long problems the way Arizona did, this offense hasn't shown it has an answer yet.

The matchup that decides the game: Raiders' pass rush vs. a shaky Chargers front

Maxx Crosby and Kwity Paye combined for five sacks against Miami, and that group gets to work behind a Chargers offensive line that already looked rattled once this season. Herbert got sacked at the worst possible moment against Arizona — third-and-manageable, trying to protect a two-point game in the fourth quarter — right before the blocked punt sequence that buried them. If Crosby and Paye can consistently collapse the pocket the way they did in Week 1, Herbert's off-schedule instincts get tested immediately, and that's the version of this Chargers offense that struggled last Sunday.

The counter, of course, is Khalil Mack lining up on the other side of the ball. It's a fun subplot — the best pass rusher in Raiders history teeing off against the offensive line that just posted a shutout on sacks allowed in Week 1. Tyler Linderbaum and the interior of that line were arguably the single biggest surprise of the opener; Mack, even at 34, is exactly the kind of veteran who can turn a clean pocket into a chaotic one if Las Vegas isn't ready for him specifically.

Can the Raiders run it against a defense that already looks vulnerable there?

Ashton Jeanty was the best story of Week 1 — 102 yards on 23 carries, plus two touchdown catches — and the matchup doesn't get easier for opposing defenses this week. The Chargers were middle-of-the-pack against the run a year ago, and their own rookie back, Omarion Hampton, scored on the ground against Arizona in Week 1, which says more about how the Chargers' front is being built (bigger, more physical, more run-first) than it does about elite run defense on the other side of the ball. If Las Vegas can lean on Jeanty and Mike Washington Jr. the way it did in the opener, it takes pressure off Kirk Cousins and keeps this game away from being a track meet with Herbert — which is not a race the Raiders want to be in.

The McConkey question

The Chargers' biggest offensive concern isn't scheme, it's health. Ladd McConkey left the Arizona game with a chest injury after a five-catch, 82-yard, one-touchdown performance — easily his best half of the season before he was hurt. If he's limited or out, Los Angeles loses its most proven target for Herbert and leans harder on a receiving corps that hasn't shown it can carry that role yet. That's the single biggest swing factor in this game that has nothing to do with either team's plan: a full-strength McConkey makes the Chargers considerably more dangerous than the version that lost to Arizona.

Watch for Bowers

Las Vegas has its own version of that storyline working in the opposite direction. Brock Bowers had a meniscus trim the week of the opener and was ruled out against Miami, but ESPN's Adam Schefter reported the Raiders believe there's a real chance he's back for the Chargers game. Kubiak has been characteristically unbothered about giving a firm timeline — "I'm not going to talk about timelines," he said when asked directly — but even a limited-snap version of Bowers changes this offense meaningfully. Cousins didn't have a single receiver top 32 yards against Miami, and Bowers is the one player on the roster capable of erasing that problem by himself. If he's active and trusted with a real workload, the Chargers' shaky front seven has to account for a matchup nightmare it didn't have to plan for in Week 1.

What still worries me about the Raiders

Turnovers. Cousins threw two interceptions against Miami and averaged just 5.3 yards per attempt, and Kubiak's own comments suggest the coaching staff knows the offense went quiet for a full quarter once the lead was established. Against a Chargers defense that, even after a bad opening week, still has real talent up front and in the back end, sloppy execution gets punished a lot faster than it did against Miami. The Raiders also still don't have much size on the boundary — if Jack Bech and Jalen Nailor can't win some contested throws down the field, this offense becomes entirely dependent on Jeanty staying hot, and no team should want to live and die by one player's workload in Week 2.

And in the background, the Fernando Mendoza situation hasn't gone anywhere. Kubiak has been unwilling to firmly close the door on a QB change if Cousins struggles again, and a rough second straight week — particularly more turnovers — would only add fuel to that conversation. It's not a Week 2 storyline yet. It could very quickly become one.

Why 2-0 actually matters here

It's easy to wave off Week 2 as too early to mean anything, but the AFC West doesn't really work that way anymore. Denver ended Kansas City's run atop the division last season, and the four-team race that's replaced it — Broncos, Chiefs, Chargers, and a Raiders team trying to force its way back in — means every early divisional swing matters more than it would in a division with one clear favorite. Denver and Kansas City play each other this same week, so by Sunday night the Raiders will know exactly what kind of company a 2-0 start puts them in.

The bigger-picture number is the one that should scare the Chargers more than it excites the Raiders: historically, only around 11.5% of teams that start 0-2 have gone on to make the playoffs. That's the stat sitting on the other side of this game. A Chargers loss doesn't just mean an 0-2 hole against a projected division rival — it means Los Angeles would be fighting from a spot that swallows nearly nine out of ten postseason hopes before the calendar hits October. For the Raiders, avoiding that spot and putting a projected contender in it instead would be a legitimately large early swing, well beyond what a normal Week 2 outcome usually carries.

Prediction

This is a legitimate measuring-stick game for a Raiders team trying to prove Week 1 wasn't a product of facing a bad opponent, and a get-right game for a Chargers team that can't afford to start 0-2 in a division this competitive. I like the Raiders' pass rush to be the deciding factor again, and I think a compromised or limited McConkey tips the offensive balance further in Las Vegas's favor than the current line suggests. It won't be as comfortable as Week 1 — the Chargers are too talented and too motivated for that — but I have the Raiders finding a way to grind this one out on the road.

Prediction: Raiders 24, Chargers 20.

The Raiders move to 2-0 for the first time in years and take an early lead in the AFC West. Lose this one, though, and Week 1 starts to look a lot more like an aberration than a foundation.