The Los Angeles Chargers missed the playoffs last season, but they've been called the AFC West's "team to beat" by John Elway.

The Chargers won six of their final seven games in 2017 with a high-octane offense and a swarming defense.

NFL Network analyst LaDainian Tomlinson understands why the team has Super Bowl aspirations for the upcoming season.

"When you look at this team on paper, it's not hard to see why," Tomlinson said on Wednesday's edition of NFL Total Access, "because you do have the best quarterback in the division and one of the best in the National Football League. The second thing is that defense is going to be nasty again.

"You keep Jason Verrett healthy at the corner position, him and Casey Hayward together along with those defensive ends that we have and then you've got the young rookie Derwin James. There's a lot of reasons to like the Los Angeles Chargers. And then, I forgot about the wide receiver position. We only have one of the best wide receivers in all of the game in Keenan Allen."