Los Angeles Rams at Los Angeles Chargers
Thursday, August 27, 2026
10:00 PM ET, SoFi Stadium
Thursday night’s Battle of LA at SoFi Stadium closes out the Week 3 preseason board, and the value is on the road team getting a generous number of points.
The Chargers are 4.5-point home favorites over the Rams with a total of 39.5. This game opened with the Chargers as a 2.5-point favorite. Since then, sharp money has moved the spread a full two points toward the home team. But when you look at what both teams have actually done in the preseason and how each is approaching the finale, the 4.5 points looks like real value for the visiting Rams.
Let’s start with the two teams’ preseason performances.
The Rams are 2-0 straight up and 2-0 against the spread in the preseason. Their Week 2 game was dominant — a 34-0 shutout win over the Saints where Los Angeles was actually the 1.5-point home underdog. Stetson Bennett played the entire first half and led the Rams to a 20-0 halftime lead before yielding to the backups in the second half. That’s an offense that’s been executing at a high level even without Matthew Stafford taking a single preseason snap.
The Chargers, by contrast, are 1-1 and coming off an embarrassing home loss. Last Thursday, they got dismantled 41-17 by the 49ers at SoFi Stadium while laying 1.5 points. Justin Herbert played three snaps. From there, Trey Lance and undrafted rookie DJ Uiagalelei couldn’t do anything to slow down San Francisco’s rotation of backups. That’s the Chargers’ entire QB depth chart behind Herbert getting exposed against second and third-team competition, and there’s no reason to expect a dramatic reversal this week.
Now the specific quarterback approach for Thursday.
Sean McVay has publicly confirmed that Rams rookie Ty Simpson will get significant playing time in the finale. Simpson was the number 13 overall pick out of Alabama and has, according to reports out of Los Angeles, looked polished in both of his preseason games so far. He’ll be pushing Stetson Bennett for the primary backup role behind Stafford, and this game becomes his final audition. Rookie quarterbacks with something to prove in preseason finales tend to play with more urgency and generate more offense than backup rotations that are just cycling through depth players.
Jim Harbaugh, meanwhile, has said his starters will play “one or two series.” That means Herbert takes the field for maybe 10-15 snaps and then hands the game over to the same Trey Lance and DJ Uiagalelei rotation that got shredded by the 49ers last week. From that point forward, the Rams’ backup unit that just put up 34 points against a competent Saints defense is going against Chargers backups who couldn’t move the ball at all in Week 2.
Sean McVay is famously conservative in preseason totals — his career preseason record sits at a strong Under-leaning percentage — but that’s about how his team plays, not how his opponents perform. The Rams’ 34 points last week came against a Saints team also cycling through backups, and it demonstrated that Los Angeles’s depth players can score in bunches when the situation calls for it.
The 4.5-point spread is a lot to lay in a preseason game, especially against a team that’s undefeated in preseason and dominated their Week 2 opponent by 34 points. Preseason spreads of that size can flip on any garbage-time possession, and getting nearly a touchdown as the visiting team is exactly the kind of value spot to target when the market has moved sharply toward the favorite.
I looked at the total too. The 39.5 is fair given the offensive output both teams have shown in preseason so far, but McVay’s historical Under-heavy tendency and the possibility of a chippy defensive-minded game between two rival organizations trying to make final roster decisions could keep the number down. The side has the clearer read given the coaching, quarterback depth, and value of the spread.
The Pick: Los Angeles Rams +4.5
