💔 Still Looking For Love In L.A.

The Chargers and Rams are villains in their own stadiums. How can they capture hearts at home? [View in browser]( [FOX SPORTS INSIDER WITH MARTIN ROGERS] In today’s FOX Sports Insider: Los Angeles’ football teams are still struggling to find hometown fans ... the Seahawks gave us an end zone celebration for the ages ... and a big NFC North showdown will cap off Week 6 in the NFL. There isn’t going to be a lot of professional football in Los Angeles over the next couple of months. The Los Angeles Chargers, courtesy of a strangely skewed schedule, will play just once at Dignity Health Sports Park between now and Dec. 15. Across town, the Los Angeles Rams are also prepping for a lengthy burst of road action and won’t be seen again in the Memorial Coliseum until Week 11, on Nov. 17. And the effect of these absences will be … what, exactly? Football in L.A. is in a strange place. The city went from having no team for two decades to a pair of them that are both still trying to find full support. On Sunday, both of L.A’s NFL stadiums were essentially taken over by rival fans. At lunchtime on the West Coast, the Rams saw red against the San Francisco 49ers: a blanket of red. A combination of the Rams’ loss of form just months after reaching the Super Bowl and the 49ers’ surprisingly superb start to the season energized one fan base and seemingly persuaded the other to stay at home. “It turned into a home game pretty quickly,” 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo said of Sunday’s tilt. “It was a lot of red out there.” A lot of red, indeed. And a lot of yellow and black down in Carson, Calif., where the Chargers faithful (the lack of said faithful being a longstanding running joke among NFL enthusiasts) were heavily outnumbered by Pittsburgh Steelers loyalists. [STORY IMAGE 1] “This is pretty bad,” Chargers running back Melvin Gordon said. “We know (Steelers fans) travel well. We kind of expected that. You could see from pregame what kind of game it was going to be; just flooded with their fans. Usually, it’s more blue. Today it was more black than anything ... with yellow towels.” There are good reasons why hordes of people love to live in L.A. and just as many why people like to visit. In football, it has become a destination city. For many NFL fans, the release of the schedule each season is a prompt to pore over the list and identify one road game to plan for. There are worse places to spend a weekend in than Los Angeles, and a whole bunch of non-football activities to partake in when you arrive. There are also plenty of fans of other teams already living in the area, as that’s what happens when you’re not only home to so many transplants, but when your previously-established teams cut and run and leave a 20-year void. It used to happen with San Diego, too, where the idea of a visit to one of the most scenic cities in the U.S. combined with warm-weather football held significant appeal. Orange County Register columnist Steve Fryer predicted what happened to the Chargers a full four years ago, after a Steelers road game in Qualcomm Stadium. “If you wondered what a Chargers home football game would look like in Los Angeles, you got a perfect preview Monday,” Fryer wrote then. “Qualcomm Stadium was at least 60 percent filled by Pittsburgh Steelers fans. It would be closer to 90 percent Steelers fans if that game had been in L.A.” [STORY IMAGE 2] Both the Rams and Chargers have thus found it difficult to engage their core fans amid that crowd ... and for now at least, it seems that L.A. football’s neat little window in the sun was nothing more than fleeting. Last season produced a combined record of 25-7 and some outstanding football from both teams. The Chargers ended the regular season tied for the best record in the AFC, only to be denied a home playoff game by the emergence of Patrick Mahomes and the corresponding excellence of the Kansas City Chiefs. The Rams went all the way to the biggest game of all and the city responded to them — sort of. The Coliseum was a happy home hunting ground, but the Super Bowl in Atlanta saw Rams fans heavily outnumbered by New England Patriots supporters, just as the Patriots had been overwhelmed by the Philadelphia Eagles fan base a year prior. It was enough of a challenge to drum up support when the teams were excellent. It’s that much harder now that they’re struggling. The Chargers followed up a loss to the 0-4 Denver Broncos with another to a 1-4 Steelers team playing third-string quarterback Devlin Hodges — an undrafted rookie making his first-ever NFL start. “Disgusting,” a sportswriter friend who bleeds Charger blue texted me from the game ... it wasn’t quite clear whether he was talking about the team’s performance on the field or the crowd makeup in the stands. The Rams, meanwhile, have lost three straight and have slid rapidly from being one of the best teams in the NFC to the third-best in the NFC West. For both teams, hopes of reigniting fan support with a series of rousing home wins are now virtually nil. Having completed their fourth home game on Sunday, the Chargers will be kept away from “home” thanks to a bye, a Mexico City game and a string of road trips. The Rams will also be absent, in part due to a bye week and a “home” game in London. Before long, the Rams and Chargers will be sharing an arena: the gleaming SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. For now, they must share a city — not just with each other, but with whatever team happens to be coming to town that week. [STORY IMAGE 3] Here’s what others have said ... Jeff Miller, Los Angeles Times: “They’d already heard the chants, the cheers and the chaos, the Chargers well aware that their stadium had been overtaken by fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Chargers never have experienced much of a home-field advantage since moving from San Diego before the 2017 season. After beating Indianapolis in overtime in their opener, they’ve lost each of the last three home games. In 2018, they were 4-3 here, with their eighth home game being played in London.” Mark Whicker, LA Daily News: “We have seen various squadrons of Eagles, Raiders and Chiefs fans barge into Carson to fill the vacuum. And wait until the Packers visit on Nov. 2. But the only thing separating this from actual Pittsburgh was the absence of french fries inside the sandwiches. The Chargers remain the only team in the NFL with no home advantage from a supportive standpoint. They have fought through that in their first two years, and maybe it helps that they don’t get booed very much when they stink.” Peter King, NBC Sports: “Rams quarterback Jared Goff (7.0 yards per attempt, seven TDs, seven picks) has been inconsistent and didn’t have time or a pocket Sunday to do much. But I wouldn’t give up on the Rams; they scored 69 points in the two games prior to Sunday, only to be let down by the defense and a shanked kick by Greg Zuerlein. The Chargers are another story. They’ve scored 20 or less four times in six games, losing all four. They miss Derwin James. Philip Rivers is getting hounded out of the pocket too much. With four formidable pass-rushes on the schedule in the next month (Tennessee, Chicago, Green Bay, Oakland), it’ll be a challenge for the Chargers to get back in the pennant race.” [IN OTHER WORDS] - No hyperbole necessary, as [Alyssa Roenigk at ESPN]( calls American gymnast Simone Biles the greatest after winning her record 25th world championship medal. - Eliud Kipchoge broke the mythical 2-hour barrier, which counts as a legendary feat — but not a world record, as [Paul Bisceglio at]( [The Atlantic]( [explains](. - The previously winless Redskins beat the winless Dolphins, but there were no winners, [writes Jerry Brewer at]( [The Washington Post](. [THE INTERNET IS UNDEFEATED] [THE INTERNET IS UNDEFEATED]( Volume up for this one, friends! You almost certainly saw the Seahawks’ epic, NSYNC-inspired celebration after scoring a touchdown against the Browns on Sunday. The question remained, however — how in sync (sorry, not sorry) were they with the actual music? And thanks to some intrepid reporting from CBS Tampa’s Grace Remington, the world now knows that the Seahawks in fact absolutely nailed the choreography. Well done, gentlemen, and congratulations on the win. [VIEWER'S GUIDE] St. Louis Cardinals at Washington Nationals (TBS, 7:38 p.m. ET) The NLCS heads to the nation’s capital for Game 3, and the Nats will attempt to take a commanding 3-0 lead behind starter Stephen Strasburg. Detroit Lions at Green Bay Packers (ESPN, 8 p.m. ET) In the final game of NFL Week 6, NFC North rivals clash at Lambeau Field. The 4-1 Packers want to keep things rolling and stay atop the division, while the 2-1-1 Lion hope to prove they should be taken seriously. WWE Raw (USA Network, 8 p.m. ET) In the second and final night of the WWE Draft, Raw and SmackDown will try to one-up one another as they both build the best roster possible from the available Superstars. [BET OF THE DAY] [BET OF THE DAY] Odds provided by [FOX Bet]( Matt Stafford 300+ passing yards & Marvin Jones 100+ receiving yards: +550 If you choose to back Stafford and the Lions tonight, you’ll be swimming upstream; according to our insights, 90% of the money and 82% of spread tickets are on Aaron Rodgers & Co. to cover at home as 3.5-point favorites. And with the Packers boasting the NFL’s fifth-best pass defense, according to Football Outsiders, it could be a long night for the Detroit offense. But at +550, our own Cris Carter has faith in the Lions QB to get the job done with some help from Jones, who leads Detroit in receiving yards (277) this season. [WHAT THEY SAID] “There’s two times of year for me: Football season, and waiting for football season.” — Darius Rucker [FOLLOW FOX SPORTS] [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [YouTube]( [Instagram]( Download the FOX Sports app for live scores and streaming [App Store]( [Google Play]( Available on: [tvOS] [Roku] [fireTV] [androidtv] [XBOX] [Google chromecast] [tvOS] [Roku] [fireTV] [androidtv] [XBOX] [Google chromecast] Forwarded this message? [Sign up](. Trademark & Copyright Notice: ™ and © 2019 FOX Media LLC and FOX Sports Interactive Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Please do not reply to this message. If you do not wish to receive emails like this in the future, please [unsubscribe](. FOX Sports respects your privacy. Click [here]( to view our Privacy Policy. FOX.com Business & Legal Affairs - Manager Digital Media P.O. Box 900 Beverly Hills, CA 90213-0900