{"id":4979,"date":"2019-01-06T23:31:42","date_gmt":"2019-01-06T23:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/?p=4979"},"modified":"2019-01-07T22:35:41","modified_gmt":"2019-01-07T22:35:41","slug":"los-angeles-chargers-challenge-new-england-patriots-in-afc-divisional-playoff-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/nfl\/los-angeles-chargers-challenge-new-england-patriots-in-afc-divisional-playoff-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Chargers Challenge New England Patriots In AFC Divisional Playoff Action"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Los Angeles Chargers are a team that has been under the radar all season long. Even in their own hometown they\u2019re overshadowed by the Los Angeles Rams. To be fair, some of this is due to circumstance. The Chargers left San Diego saying that Qualcomm Stadium was \u2018no longer a viable option\u2019 and is eventually going to move into a state of the art facility on the site of the defunct Hollywood Park racetrack. LA Stadium & Entertainment District at Hollywood Park<\/a> (LASED for short, at least until someone buys the \u2018naming rights\u2019) will be a futuristic looking stadium built at a projected cost of $2.6 billion<\/a>. The plan was to move into the facility in 2019 though due to the record rains in Southern California during the excavation phase the opening has been pushed back to the start of the 2020 NFL season<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the Chargers are playing in a stadium originally designed for the LA Galaxy soccer team<\/a>. The official name of the venue is now \u2018Dignity Health Sports Park\u2019 though during the 2018 season the Chargers called it \u2018ROKiT Field at StubHub Center\u2019. This is what happens when the primary tenant (the soccer team) has a different naming rights sponsor than the temporary tenant (the Chargers). The facility was previously known as the Home Depot Center and later the StubHub Center. Whatever it\u2019s called, it holds 27,000 people which sounds like a lot until you consider that the average team attendance in 2017 was 67,404. They\u2019ve expanded the seating to 30,000 but that\u2019s just a drop in the bucket compared to the league average. It\u2019s also smaller than the stadiums of 102 of the 130 FBS level college football teams. <\/p>\n

This should illustrate where the Chargers rank in stature in their own city compared to the more historically entrenched Rams. The teams will share the new venue (LASED) once it opens but in the meantime the Rams are playing in the 78,500 seat Los Angeles Coliseum. It\u2019s really not a bad idea\u2014the team is essentially starting from scratch moving from San Diego to Los Angeles and giving fans this type of rare \u2018up close and personal\u2019 experience at a NFL game is a decent marketing gimmick. An even better way to attract fans is by winning and the Chargers have done a good job of that this season. The Rams have a slightly better record but there\u2019s a healthy percentage of sports betting \u2018wise guys\u2019 that think the Chargers are the better team.<\/p>\n

The NFL is a league that awards exceptional play in one phase of the game or another. Teams might have a nasty defense or a high octane offense but they are rarely competent in all aspects NFL play. The Chargers are an exception\u2014they\u2019re solid in virtually every statistical category. They finished the 2018 regular season ranked #11 in total offense, #10 in passing offense, #15 in rushing offense and in a sixth place tie for best scoring offense at 26.8 PPG. On defense, the Chargers ranked #9 in total defense, #9 in passing defense, #9 in rushing defense and # 8 in scoring defense giving up 20.6 PPG. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to play \u2018armchair psychologist\u2019 and conclude that the small size of the Chargers\u2019 temporary home field has something to do with their play on the road. Whatever the reason, they\u2019ve dominated outside of the 310 area code. They\u2019re now 8-1 straight up and against the spread on the road this season but you can also factor in one of their \u2018home games\u2019 which was played nearly 5,500 miles outside of Southern California at London\u2019s Wembley Stadium. That means they\u2019re technically 9-1 SU\/ATS away from home. This solid road play is nothing new and factoring in the aforementioned game in London they\u2019re 17-7 ATS away from home during the past three seasons and are on a 22-8-1 ATS streak overall.<\/p>\n

By now, everyone knows the deal with New England. Bill Belichick and Tom Brady are both legends and they\u2019ve dominated the Chargers during the Phillip Rivers era going 7-0 overall (5-2 ATS) and 2-0 in the playoffs. This isn\u2019t a great Patriots team, however and the defense is particularly vulnerable ranking #21 in total yards per game. They\u2019ve done a decent job keeping opponents off the board and the Pats are #7 in scoring defense but at some point the \u2018give up a lot of yards\u2019 dynamic just doesn\u2019t work. And if you\u2019re thinking that the Pats\u2019 offense is far more potent than the Chargers\u2019 think again\u2014New England averaged 27.3 PPG during the regular season, Los Angeles averaged 26.8. There\u2019s at least one group with whom the Chargers aren\u2019t the least bit \u2018under the radar\u2019–NFL betting<\/a> \u2018sharps\u2019 who have pounded Los Angeles moving the line from a -5 opener to as low as -3.5. <\/p>\n

BET LOS ANGELES CHARGERS +4 OVER NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Los Angeles Chargers are a team that has been under the radar all season long. Even in their own…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":4980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4981,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4979\/revisions\/4981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}