Peter King expects Chargers first home game to be after Week 1

In his Football Morning in America piece this week, PFT’s Peter King wrote that he suspects that the LA Rams could host Sunday Night Football in Week 1 to celebrate the opening of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood for its first NFL season.

Here’s King’s reasoning for why he thinks the Rams could host the Dallas Cowboys in Week 1, leaving the Chargers to draw seconds in one of the following two weeks:

My best guess at the early slate. The NFL’s five-year streak of the Super Bowl champ opening the season with a Thursday night home game got broken last year when, as an homage to pro football’s 100th season, ancient rivals Green Bay and Chicago opened the year; Super Bowl champ New England played on Sunday night. This year, there’s a bit of an issue with the Chiefs opening the season at home at 7:20 p.m. CT on Thursday, Sept. 10: The cross-parking-lot Royals are slated to play that afternoon at 12:35. Maybe the game could be moved up 90 minutes, or maybe it could be part of a doubleheader on any of the three previous days of the series, and then the Chiefs could host the opener against, say, the Raiders or Texans.

That would leave Sunday night for the opening of the new jewel of the league: SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. I’d expect the Rams to open at home in Week 1 and the co-tenant Chargers opening at home in Week 2 or 3. If it’s the Rams in Week 1, imagine Cowboys-Rams on Sunday night, with the glitterati schmoozing with Roger Goodell and Al Michaels and LeBron James pre-game.

It really may not be breaking news that the Chargers wouldn’t be at home in Week 1, as Rams owner Stan Kroenke is the main person behind the creation of SoFi and all the major world events to follow. Because each team has to have about eight home games (there are also international games that could potentially pull a team away from SoFi, but that seems unlikely given the price tag and excitement around its debut), then we know that there won’t be many NFL weeks without a game at SoFi.

If the Rams are going to be the host team in Week 1, then the Chargers will fall behind them in Week 2 or 3. The LAC home games in 2020 are vs:

Broncos, Chiefs, Raiders, Patriots, Jets, Falcons, Panthers, and Jaguars.

Obviously the one big shining beacon there as of today is the idea of a Patriots-Chargers game in SoFi in which Tom Brady is playing for the home team. This is the narrative that the NFL would like to wonder about today, though I still believe it is quite unlikely.