Sportsbook Insiders: Oddsmakers Shift Sentiment on Chargers' Playoff Chances in 2026

There’s no doubt that the Los Angeles Chargers were the most disappointing team in Week 1 of the 2026 NFL season.

Justin Herbert and Co. mustered just 14 points on offense, and the Chargers lost outright at home as the biggest favorite on the board against the Arizona Cardinals. The loss screwed a ton of players in Survivor and plenty of moneyline parlays on Sunday.

L.A. entered the season as the No. 2 team in the odds to win the AFC, an odds-on favorite to make the playoffs, and at +1700 to win the Super Bowl at the best NFL betting sites.

Yet, one game has flipped the Chargers from a surefire playoff team to one that oddsmakers aren’t sure will be in the top seven in the AFC this season.

“We had a couple big fallers, Chargers being the biggest,” Ty Gour, Sports Trader at Fanatics Sportsbook told Sports Illustrated about teams that they moved in their power rating after Week 1. “The reason being – there is there's a term I like to use, and it's a pretty popular term as well – just like that was a bankable win against Arizona. It's one they really should have had. And the fact that they didn't, and with the schedule they have, it's going to be really tough for them to get to the 10-win threshold.

“It takes them from a team we've viewed as a playoff team to a team that we view as struggling to get into the playoffs now.”

Gour is not alone.

Sports Illustrated spoke to several oddsmakers across four different books this week, and all four mentioned the Chargers as the team that dropped the most in their eyes after Week 1. It’s impacted L.A.’s odds for Week 2, which has become a must-win matchup at home against the Las Vegas Raiders.

“The Chargers are the main one as they had the worst loss of the weekend,” Christian Cipollini, Senior Trading Manager at BetMGM told Sports Illustrated. “They would likely be 7-point favorites this week with a better performance against the Cardinals.”

Fanatics Sportsbook currently lists the Chargers as 6.5-point favorites in Week 2, a sign that L.A. should bounce back from the shocking Week 1 upset.

However, as Gour mentioned, Fanatics no longer projects the Chargers to be a playoff team in the AFC.

L.A. dropped to even money (+100) to make the playoffs and is -130 to miss the postseason after the loss to Arizona. Using implied probability, the Chargers have a 56.52 percent chance of missing the playoffs based on those odds (-130). The Chargers also dropped all the way back to +2200 to win the Super Bowl.

While the Raiders’ matchup is a winnable one in Week 2, L.A. has a tough schedule going forward. It takes on the Buffalo Bills, Seattle Seahawks, Denver Broncos, and Kansas City Chiefs before a Week 7 bye, and then it comes out of the bye week with matchups against the Los Angeles Rams, Houston Texans, and Baltimore Ravens.

There’s a chance L.A. goes into Week 11 well under .500, and it still has playoff teams like Denver, New England and San Francisco (along with another matchup against the Chiefs) left on the schedule.

So, the path to the playoffs becomes a lot tougher now that the Arizona game – which was expected by everyone to be a win – is now a loss.

“The Chargers were not nearly as good as we thought they were,” Gour said. “And in that case in particular, especially with the daunting schedule coming up for the Chargers, they really take a hit in our ratings going forward.”

There’s still plenty of time for Jim Harbaugh’s team to turn things around, but the path to a playoff spot is murky at best. The betting market is already telling us that someone else is going to slide into the spot that L.A. was projected to get before the 2026 season began.

Odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.

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