The Los Angeles Rams and Minnesota Vikings will kick off Week 8 on Thursday night with a fun matchup at SoFi Stadium. The Vikings are predictably favored in this one, being a 5-1 team that just lost its first game on Sunday, but the Rams will be a tough out with Cooper Kupp and possibly Puka Nacua returning to the field.
Oddsmakers are favoring the Vikings and so are NFL experts. According to Tallysight, 84% of experts are taking the Vikings to win outright and 73% are picking them to cover the 3-point spread. As for the total points scored, 62% of experts are taking the over at 48 points.
The Rams are no strangers to being the underdogs. They’ve only been favored in one of their six games so far this season, which was last week’s win against the Raiders – though they failed to cover the spread as 7.5-point favorites. Through six games, the Rams are just 1-5 against the spread despite playing five one-possession games. So they’ve kept things close, just not close enough.
The Vikings, meanwhile, are 5-1 against the spread this season and the over is 3-3 in their six games. It’s a short week for both teams, and Sean McVay is an impressive 6-1 in games where the Rams were on short rest, so it should be a close battle between these two NFC foes coached by a couple of close friends.