It’s inevitable to notice once I looked at the rest of the primetime schedules. They have like 5 or 6 games in primetime this season, and only one of them is a divisional rivalry. IIRC Chargers aren’t even the top-3 most supported franchise in their home market LA, and they’re barely playoff contender. So why are they getting an excessive amount of primetime games?
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Third most popular LA market > a good portion of most markets in terms of total people watching. It’s the same reason Cowboys and Giants get so much prime time.
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Chargers play every team close, good or bad (Thanks Staley…). This means the average chargers game is exciting to watch even for fans of other teams.
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NFL is desperate to promote LA teams. Rams had very little shot of turning it around this year in terms of projections, due to still having the effects of the Stafford trade hampering their rebuild from the Super Bowl year. Chargers, for some reason only god knows, were given the benefit of the doubt before heading into this season, and were dubbed the “dark horse Super Bowl team” again by the media.
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Chargers schedule this year has a lot of big market or playoff bound teams due to coincidence. Ravens, Lions, Jets (this was assuming Rodgers would play), Cowboys, Chiefs Twice, Dolphins.
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