{"id":265386,"date":"2026-04-13T10:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T10:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/265386\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T10:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T10:40:10","slug":"los-angeles-chargers-2026-nfl-draft-picks-biggest-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/265386\/","title":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Chargers 2026 NFL draft picks, biggest needs"},"content":{"rendered":"


LOS ANGELES — The 2026 NFL draft<\/a> (8 p.m. ET on ESPN, ABC, ESPN App) will start on April 23 in Pittsburgh. TheLos Angeles Chargers<\/a>are scheduled to make five of the draft’s 257 picks<\/a>, beginning with the No. 22 selection of the first round on Thursday night<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During the three-day event (Rounds 2-3 on April 24 and Rounds 4-7 on April 25), we will update this page with analysis on every pick.<\/p>\n

A full list of Chargers’ selections are below, in addition to positional needs.<\/p>\n

NFL draft coverage:<\/p>\n

Latest expert mock drafts<\/a><\/p>\n

Kiper’s Big Board<\/a> | Team needs<\/a><\/p>\n

Consensus rankings<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Round 1: No. 22 overall<\/p>\n

Round 2:No. 55<\/p>\n

Round 3: No. 86<\/p>\n

Round 4:No. 123<\/p>\n

Round 6:No. 204<\/p>\n

Top three needs<\/a>:RG, LG, DT.<\/p>\n

The Chargers’ interior offensive line has been this team’s Achilles’ heel for the past two seasons. The Chargers will have a new interior after center Bradley Bozeman’s retirement, right guard Mekhi Becton<\/a>‘s release and left guard Zion Johnson<\/a>‘s departure in free agency. L.A. signed former Commanders starting center Tyler Biadasz<\/a>, but questions still remain at the guard spots. The team signed Cole Strange<\/a> from Miami, but he ranked 40th out of 65 qualifying guards in pass block win rate last season.<\/p>\n

If Penn State guard Olaivavega Ioane<\/a> is there at No. 22, can we assume the Chargers will run the draft card in?<\/p>\n

It depends on who else is available. Through two drafts, GM Joe Hortiz has pretty much stuck to drafting the best player available, even when the Chargers had seemingly filled that need (see Joe Alt<\/a> over Malik Nabers<\/a>, Omarion Hampton<\/a> over any offensive lineman). If Ioane is the top player on their board and available at 22, he’ll be a Charger; otherwise, it could make for another somewhat surprising pick.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES — The 2026 NFL draft (8 p.m. ET on ESPN, ABC, ESPN App) will start on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[116153,750,112,114,113,1333,752,17640],"class_list":["post-265386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-116153","tag-espn","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-los-angeles-chargers","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-draft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}