49ers, Rams put travel to test in season-opening showdown in Australia

The Playbook

One side will be proven right. The other, wrong.

It’s only the natural conclusion that we — and likely 30 other teams around the NFL — can draw from the competing travel strategies taken by the 49ers and Rams for this 8,000-mile excursion.

While Kyle Shanahan was wrapping up the 49ers’ third and final full practice at AAMI Park, next to the Melbourne Cricket Grounds, Sean McVay and his team were just taking off from LAX.

The Rams will have been on the ground in the outback for about 24 hours when they kick off the season Thursday night (Friday morning local time). The Niners will have been there a full week.

The contrasting choices have captivated the sleep and science communities, and the attention of an increasingly global sports ecosystem will be on which theory of the case proves correct.

As the NFL expands its international slate — a record nine games this season spread across seven countries on four continents — the 49ers and Rams are traveling farther than any teams before them. It’s not only a meeting of NFC West rivals; it’s a case study.

Of course, there’s more that will go into determining the outcome in a matchup of two of the NFL’s smartest coaches and most talented teams. The juggernaut of a roster the Rams have assembled are heavy Super Bowl favorites and favored to win this one by about 3 ½ points. 

But if they are able to pull out a win, if Matthew Stafford isn’t bleary-eyed and Myles Garrett gets after Brock Purdy like he would back home, well, expect the rest of the NFL to take note.

The 49ers are taking the traditional route, if there was one for a first-of-its-kind season-opener on a continent that’s never previously hosted an NFL game. They flew in a week ahead of kickoff, adapted to the 17-hour time difference and ingrained themselves in the community.

These games are as much a promotional arm for the NFL as anything else, so that’s how teams have typically attacked them in the past, including San Francisco’s past trips to London.

The Rams experimented with a different approach last year when they visited Wembley Stadium. They were in and out in less than 36 hours, with a 35-7 win in hand. It worked so well with an eight-hour time difference that, after doing further research, they decided to try to pull off the same kind of James Bond act while navigating the international dateline.

Both teams poured resources into the question over the offseason and came to vastly different conclusions. The 49ers will be recovered from the long-haul flight and adjusted to the time difference, but the Rams are betting they won’t need to adjust their body clocks at all and will be on their way back to Los Angeles before their brains know any better.

Six days after the Niners’ arrival, Shanahan said Tuesday night was the first time he slept through the night. “It’s taken me a while to get adjusted here. I’ve been waking up at one in the morning, wide awake every day until today. And I was extremely tired before this morning.”

But still, he wasn’t ready to draw any conclusions.

At least not until Thursday night (to the Rams) or Friday morning (for the 49ers).

“The real thing that’s going to help this game the most or hurt this game the most,” he said, “is who plays better football. … There’s too many variables that go into this stuff.”

Marquee Matchup

Sean McVay vs. Raheem Morris

Before he was the hot shot Super Bowl-winning head coach, Sean McVay was just a young offensive staffer that Raheem Morris didn’t keep around when he was named head coach of the Buccaneers in 2008. “He’ll joke and say I’m the first person to fire him,” said Morris, now the 49ers’ defensive coordinator tasked with stopping McVay’s genius twice a year. He held the same job on McVay’s staff for three seasons, including their Super Bowl run in 2021, so there’s no shortage of familiarity there. But in a different sense, the 49ers will be giving McVay their most foreign look in some time with the changes Morris has implemented to the scheme Robert Saleh ran last season that allowed the Rams to top 400 yards in each of their meetings.

The Pick

Rams 34, 49ers 30: It’s going to be a long flight home for the loser. And an even longer recovery period for the 49ers once they get there after spending a week adjusting to Australian time. It won’t be enough to overcome the firepower of the Rams, even without Aaron Donald. There’s no room for error against a team as loaded as Los Angeles, and the 49ers have too many questions they still have to answer, whether it’s how Nick Bosa and George Kittle perform in their first games back from serious injuries, the soft spot at left guard or the holes opened on the defensive line this week by the losses of Sam Okuayinonu and Alfred Collins.

4 Downs

Keys to the game

PROTECT PURDY: A humongous collective sigh of relief could allegedly be heard from the 49ers’ team hotel when they learned that they wouldn’t have to worry about Aaron Donald. “I’ve never been more excited to be wrong about something,” said head coach Kyle Shanahan, who was assured he would have to devise a plan to block Donald and Myles Garrett with an offensive line that has been arguably the biggest question mark of training camp. Whoever lines up at left guard when the 49ers offense takes the field will be the first public declaration of the winner of what has been an uninspiring position battle. It’s likely to be one of Connor Colby, Carver Willis or Jarrett Patterson. They’d better hope they keep Brock Purdy upright.

LIMIT EXPLOSIVES: Between Matthew Stafford’s rocket arm, Sean McVay’s offensive genius and the playmaking of Puka Nacua, the Rams possess the most explosive attack in the NFL. They led the league with 72 plays of 20 or more yards last season. It may be a tall task to keep them out of the end zone, but all the more critical with how hard points will be to come by against their beefed-up defense. If there’s a unit up to the task, it may be the Niners’ defense, which even in the thralls of injury the past two seasons has limited opponents to the second-fewest big plays (rushes of 10+ yards or passes of 20+ yards) of any team in the NFL.

ROOKIE IMPACT: Kyle Shanahan knows what he can count on from his veterans, even those coming back from injuries such as George Kittle and Nick Bosa. What will only be revealed through playing time is which rookies are up to the bright lights of the NFL, and Niners find themselves in the position of needing solid performances from at least one or two of their picks from this past draft. De’Zhaun Stribling was the star of the preseason, but this will be the first test to see if he stands out while playing with Kittle, Christian McCaffrey and Mike Evans. Injuries on the defensive line have suddenly thrust Gracen Halton, James Thompson Jr. and Romello Height into potentially important roles. And linebacker Jaden Dugger is a prototypical fit for Raheem Morris’ defense, but he showed during the preseason that he can be exposed.

WIN ON SPECIAL TEAMS: One underrated reason why the 49ers were able to withstand an onslaught of injuries last season and still win 12 games was their improvement on special teams, upgrading to Eddy Pineiro at kicker and bringing in coordinator Brant Boyer. Against a team like the Rams, it’s all the more imperative to do the little things well. That means making sure even drives that don’t end in a touchdown are still productive, whether it results in three points or pinning Matthew Stafford back on his own goal line.