The Minnesota Vikings will visit SoFi Stadium on Thursday to face off against the Los Angeles Chargers in a Thursday Night Football game featuring two teams that suffered losses last week and desperately need a win to breathe easier. Minnesota is 3-3, while Los Angeles is 4-3 on the season.
Minnesota Vikings at Los Angeles Chargers
Game Details
Date: Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025
Time: 8:15 p.m. ET
Location: SoFi Stadium, Inglewood, California
How to Watch
TV: Amazon Prime Video (national)
Live Stream: Amazon Prime Video, NFL+
Announcers: Al Michaels (play-by-play), Kirk Herbstreit (analyst), Kaylee Hartung (sideline)
What’s at Stake in Tonight’s Thursday Night Football?
Justin Herbert racked up 420 passing yards and three touchdowns during Week 7, but once again showed inconsistency and ended up hurting the Chargers’ offensive performance in their surprising loss to the Indianapolis Colts.
Names such as Quentin Johnston, Keenan Allen, Ladd McConkey, and Oronde Gadsden still allow Los Angeles to be minimally competitive against more vigorous opponents. Still, injuries on the offensive line have a greater negative impact than expected, with Kimani Vidal finding it challenging to become a key player.
On the other hand, Carson Wentz certainly had his worst performance of the season in the Vikings’ loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. The quarterback lacked accuracy and threw many bad passes in the red zone, meaning the profusion of field goals was not enough to secure victory.
However, the problems are not limited to the starting quarterback. J.J. McCarthy showed promise early in the season with flashes of good plays, but he only delivered one good quarter in two games as a starter and struggled to perform in the most crucial moments of a game.
How Do the Vikings and Chargers Match Up?
Tonight’s matchup will pit two quarterbacks against each other, who need to give fans a more positive response. The offenses and defenses also need to overcome the problems caused by injuries and inconsistencies to reach the highest level of the best teams in the current NFL season.
Vikings Offense vs. Chargers Defense
Vikings rank only 20th nationally and have a 71.8 Offensive Impact score and a C- grade from PFSN. McCarthy continues to suffer from an ankle injury and will once again force Wentz to take charge to end an unwelcome streak of three consecutive losses and get the team back on track with the NFC playoffs in mind.
The Chargers’ defense ranks 18th nationally with a 72.9 Defensive Impact score and a C-grade from PFSN. This will allow the veteran quarterback to exploit defensive weaknesses (exposed mainly in the defeat against Philadelphia) to score important points in tonight’s evenly matched game.
Chargers Offense vs. Vikings Defense
Los Angeles’ offense ranks 19th nationally and has a 72.4 Offensive Impact score with a C-grade from PFSN. The team’s average of 5.7 yards per play shows that it is able to advance well down the field during its drives, but the average of only 2.22 points per drive exposes the difficulty of capitalizing on that advance with touchdowns.
Minnesota’s defense ranks 4th nationally and has an 86.8 Defensive Impact score and a B grade from PFSN. The most impressive statistic is the average of 9.0% sacks during the season’s first six games. The metrics favor the Vikings considering their defense, but the need for a win that hangs over both teams after heavy defeats over the weekend makes this a highly anticipated matchup.
Vikings vs. Chargers’ Players’ Fantasy Outlooks
Here’s what PFSN’s Kyle Soppe wrote about the notable players’ fantasy outlooks for tonight’s Thursday Night Football matchup:
Justin Jefferson
If Cooper DeJean doesn’t get his hand in the mix at the last possible second to disrupt a Jefferson touchdown, we are viewing last week as a win.
Instead, the elite wideout finished with a 50% catch rate and looked less connected with Wentz than Addison. I’m not the least bit worried, and I can’t imagine you are either.
Jefferson has been QB and matchup proof for the majority of his career, and by earning double-digit targets in back-to-back-to-back games, that’s still very much the way to approach #18.
His slot usage is tracking for a career low while his deep target rate is a career high — a profile I’d fear for most receivers, but not Jefferson. We know that Kevin O’Connell has a scheme that centers around him and that his ball/route skills are nothing short of elite.
Los Angeles has seen a featured WR clear 20 PPR points in three of their past five games, and the two exceptions were teams that struggle to put any WR fantasy points on the board (Giants and Dolphins).
Jefferson is in the WR1 overall conversation this week, for the remainder of this season, and in dynasty formats.
Justin Herbert
The game script got completely away from Los Angeles last week, and that was golden for owners of Justin Herbert (420 passing yards on 55 attempts to go along with 31 yards on the ground).
You obviously can’t rely on that sort of game weekly, but Jim Harbaugh continues to lean into this high pass rate (38+ attempts in four of his past five), and we have to assume it stays this way with the running backs struggling to impact the game much on the ground.
The comfort in the system looks better and better on Herbert with each passing week. In September, he completed 39.2% of his pressured passes with a 50.2 passer rating, since he’s at 52.5% and 94.7.
That type of growth comes with confidence and allows him to project well in this spot. He has three receivers that he very much trusts, and the sudden usage of Oronde Gadsden is just another reason to like Herbert as a top-5 QB this week and for the rest of the season.
Ladd McConkey
In September, Ladd McConkey didn’t have a single game with 14 expected PPR points, but in October, he has had nothing but games like that, earning 31 looks across those three contests.
More impressive than the target count is the placement of those looks: 67.3% slot rate along with six end zone targets.
It’s hard to argue that McConkey’s ceiling rivals that of Quentin Johnston, but he’s back to showing the elevated floor that we fell in love with last season, and that has him checking in as my top Bolt moving forward.
He’s deserving of WR1 consideration this season, but he’s a lineup lock regardless of how you split hairs.
Jordan Addison
Giddy up! I believe that this Kevin O’Connell offense is mainly going to function similarly no matter who is under center, so the fact that Jordan Addison was targeted on four of his seven first-quarter routes speaks volumes to me.
Included in that sample was a twisting 34-yard catch that could have been an even bigger gain had the pass been on target, but the ability to shake free and open windows was on full display last week against the Eagles.
Addison isn’t a threat to out-earn Justin Jefferson on any sort of consistent basis. That said, I’m not sold on this running game, and the Vikings project to have only two potential weather spots remaining on their schedule.
Nice conditions and an offensive savant is a good way to find flex value, especially when the subject of discussion is someone who has proven capable of scoring touchdowns in bunches.
Addison checks in as a low-end WR2/high-end flex for me this week, and that’s roughly where I’ll have him most weeks.
