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The Rams thought they’d be at their best in Australia. Instead, this was their worst

Nate Atkins

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7583772/2026/09/11/rams-lose-49ers-australia-travel-plan/?unlocked_article_code=1.AVE.CBFR.TOqSX_Xbc_FE&source=emp_shared_article&smid=ta-ios-share

MELBOURNE, Australia — For 15 months, the Los Angeles Rams devised a plan to dominate an Australia game in just 30 hours between flights.

It took two plays for that plan to fall apart.

The Rams were halfway across the world and 17 hours from the SoFi Stadium backdrop they gave up to make this trip for the NFL’s first regular-season game in Australia. What they needed was to hit a slant pass to Puka Nacua to pull within a field goal of the San Francisco 49ers in the third quarter, so Matthew Stafford fired the ball into his go-to receiver’s gut, only for Nacua to fall short of the end zone.

On fourth down, coach Sean McVay called for Stafford to run a quarterback sneak. And then he hit a brick wall for a turnover on downs.

Then the 49ers drove 99 yards on the Rams’ retooled and star-studded defense to add yet another touchdown.

A hallmark moment became an international embarrassment on Friday morning at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where the Rams suffered a 27-7 loss to the rival 49ers.

It was their first defeat by more than one score since the 2024 season, when Saquon Barkley and the Philadelphia Eagles ran all over them. It was also the fewest points they’d ever scored in a game with Stafford at quarterback.

“This is a humbling day for us,” McVay said. “… I make no excuses. Whether you want to say it’s about travel or whatever, we just weren’t good enough in that window.”

49ers dominate Down Under against rival Rams

The Rams placed a bet that flying in the day before an Australian game in order to not change body clocks could have them at their best. After all, that’s what worked so brilliantly for them last October in London, when they flew in the day before from Baltimore, kept their Eastern Time-adjusted body clocks and rolled in a 9:30 a.m. ET start to win 35-7 over the Jacksonville Jaguars in a game that gave birth to their identity of three-tight end sets.

But this moment was inherently different: The body clock shift was 17 hours rather than five. The flight was 16 hours rather than seven. The setting would come in Week 1, after no preseason for their starters, rather than packed in the middle of the schedule and right before a bye week as the London game was.

Rather than see themselves at their best, the Rams found themselves at their worst in Australia. They ended up flying 32 hours in three days just to take their worst loss in a year and a half.

It was the opposite approach of the 49ers, who turned the week into an experience for the players and a chance to reset body clocks to Australian time. San Francisco must now fight the effects of trying to reset those body clocks back to Pacific Time ahead of the final 16 games, and perhaps that’s Los Angeles’ edge in never changing at all. It’s possible that’s the trade-off in these two disparate approaches.

“I know everyone’s going to make a huge deal about that and be asking about the travel s—,” wide receiver Davante Adams said. “That had nothing to do with it. We just have to play better.”

Even if the Rams don’t want to admit that their travel plan played a role in this outcome, they need that to be true. They need a Week 1 game in Australia to be an anomaly of circumstance and planning errors, at a time when costs were higher given that their starters skipped the entire preseason.

Because the alternative is what they can’t have become true. The 2026 Rams can’t resemble anything as they did here.

That cannot be the connection they’ll see from Stafford and Adams. Last year, it wasn’t smooth out of the gate, but they found a way to become a red zone cheat code as Adams led the league with 14 receiving touchdowns and Stafford won his first MVP. In Melbourne, the two connected just three times on six tries for 26 yards. Stafford managed 155 yards on 25 attempts and did not throw a touchdown pass, one year after he piled up an NFL-best 46.

“It’s just Week 1 stuff that you deal with sometimes,” Adams added. “It’s not an excuse, but there’s certain times you have to feel them out and get a good feel for what the defense and what they’re doing based on what we were running.”

That cannot be the tight end room they see this season, either. After all, that was the group that revolutionized last year’s offense from strong but static to unpredictable, setting a league-wide trend with 13 personnel and dominating on play action and in the run game with defenses consistently compromised.

This offseason, that group added a second-round pick to the group in Max Klare and got excited about a Year 2 breakout for Terrance Ferguson. In Melbourne, Klare was inactive, Ferguson didn’t catch a pass and no tight end finished with more than 13 yards.

That can’t be the secondary approach they’ll take this season, either. The Rams made that group a focus to overhaul after last season and targeted physical, man-coverage cornerbacks in Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson, who won two Super Bowls together as outside cornerbacks on the Kansas City Chiefs.

But against the 49ers, the Rams ran man coverage on just 13.9 percent of plays as opposed to 77 percent in zone coverage, according to Summer Sport research. As a result, Brock Purdy finished with a 73.5 percent completion rate, three touchdown passes and a 105.6 quarterback rating, and Watson was too often on the receiving end.

The Rams did secure one interception of Purdy, when Quentin Lake drifted back into zone and Purdy tried to force a ball to Mike Evans. The Rams defense celebrated by pretending to take a nap, a shot the 49ers would throw back at them in a postgame victory tweet with the caption, “Sleep tight.”

That can’t be the version of pass-rush support they’ll put around Myles Garrett and Aaron Donald. Garrett was neutralized, and Donald was back at home after opting to wait another week to make his return from a two-year retirement. Without that superstar impact, the Rams managed no sacks and just two quarterback hits on 39 dropbacks.

They had moments like the one in the second quarter, where they rushed four players, with Braden Fiske and Desjuan Johnson rotating in. The 49ers didn’t even run play action, and Purdy didn’t see a body around him as he completed a seven-step drop and found Demarcus Robinson on a deep post for a 39-yard touchdown.

“From start to finish, I just don’t feel like we were locked in and focused,” outside linebacker Byron Young said.

That can’t be the version of Garrett the Rams get, either. He was the one most noticeably not himself, consistently checking in and out of the game and lacking his normal burst after missing weeks of training camp with a swollen knee. He finished outside of the box score, too, with zero tackles, sacks, quarterback hits or tackles for loss.

“This was the worst version of myself that I’ve put out there,” Garrett said. “I’ve got to be better. I’ve got to find a way to recover and get back to the player I know that I can be and that I’ve shown I’ve been before. … When I was out there, I was a little bit more focused on myself and trying to stay healthy than what they were doing, and it showed. I wasn’t where I needed to be for my team.”

The list of Rams players who looked themselves in Melbourne was rather light. McDuffie flew around to make plays in the run and pass games, including the rep in the red zone where he blanketed a much larger George Kittle and nearly reeled in an interception. Blake Corum showed strong vision and improving speed, finishing with 54 yards on 10 carries.

The good news is that so many parts can go so much better. And they’ll have to.

Nacua can get back to taking over games. The tight ends can get back to blurring the run and the pass, with Stafford at the controls and Kyren Williams and Corum wearing defenses down between the tackles. Adams will score touchdowns, allowing the Rams to build leads their opponents have to answer by dropping back against Garrett, Young, Kobie Turner and Donald, and throwing at McDuffie, Lake, Watson, Kam Curl and Kam Kinchens.

They have to flush this game so hard they leave it in Australia, in a time and space they thought they could master but couldn’t.

“We have one hell of a team, and I don’t think anyone doubts that internally,” Lake said. “But we have to live up to our standard. We’ve been talking about how our floor is so high, but we have to continue to play at that level and continue to work at that level.

“Maybe this was the wake-up call that we needed.”

Kyle Shanahan, on the very first drive, as Mike Silver @MikeSilver wrote "the why is everything" Shanahan's shifts and motions aren't just window dressing, they have a specific purpose and reason. Everything is intentional. pic.twitter.com/KKbYipZolP

— JonnyDel's Backup (@SulligentHUB) September 12, 2026