Field Yates@FieldYates
The two biggest trades of the offseason were Myles Garrett to the Rams and AJ Brown to the Patriots.

Both players have been placed on IR after just one game played.

Tough starts.

Albert Breer@AlbertBreer
Myles Garrett landing on injured reserve, and needing knee surgery this early on in the season, is part of the risk of taking on a player—no matter how great—after he turns 30. But taking care of it aggressively is smart.

Tough blow for the Rams, regardless.

Rams star Myles Garrett to undergo knee surgery, will be placed on injured reserve

Gary Klein

https://www.latimes.com/sports/rams/story/2026-09-13/rams-myles-garrett-to-have-knee-surgery-ir

Rams’ blockbuster acquisition Myles Garrett will undergo knee surgery and will be placed injured reserve after a quiet debut in a 27-7 loss to the 49ers in Australia.

Garrett must sit at least four games, leaving a suddenly vulnerable Rams pass rush to rely on Byron Young and others while awaiting Aaron Donald’s anticipated return against the New York Giants.

The Rams, already reeling from an embarrassing season-opening defeat in Australia, suffered another major loss Sunday.

Star edge rusher Myles Garrett will have surgery on his left knee and be placed on injured reserve, a team official said.

Garrett must sit out a minimum of four games. The Rams’ next four opponents are the New York Giants, Denver Broncos, Philadelphia Eagles and Buffalo Bills.

The impact of Garrett’s absence could be lessened if Aaron Donald makes his season debut when the Rams return to action Sept. 21 for their home opener. The future Hall of Fame lineman rejoined the Rams after a two-year retirement — in part to play alongside Garrett — but did not travel to Australia for the opener.

Regardless, Garrett’s surgery is another blow for a Rams team that opened the season as the favorite to win Super Bowl LXI.

One of the biggest reasons for that status was Garrett, a two-time NFL defensive player of the year who amassed 125½ sacks in nine seasons with the Cleveland Browns, including an NFL-record 23 last season.

The Rams acquired Garrett in a June trade that sent third-year edge rusher Jared Verse, a 2027 first-round draft pick and two more picks to the Browns. Garrett missed most of training camp because of an unspecified knee issue that severely limited him in a 27-7 defeat by the San Francisco 49ers on Friday.

The seven-time All-Pro played 40 of 65 snaps and, for only the fourth time in his career, did not make a tackle. Afterward, Garrett described his performance as “the worst version of myself.” He said there were times he was thinking about his health rather than what the 49ers were doing on offense.

The Rams did not record a sack and hit 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy only two times.

In the opener, Garrett started opposite Byron Young, a fourth-year pro who had 12 sacks last season and made the Pro Bowl.

Josaiah Stewart, Desjuan Johnson and rookie Wesley Bailey are the other outside linebackers on the roster. Stewart, a second-year pro, had six tackles and one quarterback hit against the 49ers. Johnson, a fourth-year pro, moved from end to outside linebacker last season. He had one tackle against the 49ers. Bailey was the only undrafted free agent to make the Rams’ roster. He played two snaps on special teams in the opener.

On This Day: @kurt13warner makes his NFL debut in 1999, throwing for 309 yards with 3 touchdowns. pic.twitter.com/hg4iFYffQv

— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) September 12, 2026

Why the 2026 NFC West Is Likely to Win the Super Bowl Again
The NFC West Enters the 2026 Season With Three Teams Capable of Making a Serious Super Bowl Run

Scott Kacsmar
·
https://www.betus.com.pa/nfl/news/why-the-2026-nfc-west-is-likely-to-win-the-super-bowl-again/

The NFL has gotten off to a low-scoring start after three top Super Bowl contenders in the NFC West played their first game. The Seattle Seahawks started their title defense with another win over the Patriots, then the 49ers upset the not-so-super Rams, 27-7, in Australia.

💡 Key Takeaways: NFC West Super Bowl Contenders

The NFC West should play a significant role in who wins Super Bowl LXI with three of the best teams (sorry, Arizona).

The Rams opened as Super Bowl odds favorites (+500) but suffered a rough 20-point loss in Australia after losing five games in 2025 by a combined 17 points.

Brock Purdy’s stats included three touchdowns, with one to veteran Mike Evans in his team debut.

The Seahawks seem to have avoided a season-ending hip injury to quarterback Sam Darnold.

The NFC West already made history in 2025 as the first division to have three teams win 12-plus NFL games before the Seahawks vanquished the 49ers and Rams in the playoffs to reach Super Bowl LX.

The Rams Humbled Abroad

The Los Angeles Rams opened the season with the best NFL odds (+500) to win the Super Bowl this season after acquiring players like Myles Garrett, Trent McDuffie, and bringing Aaron Donald out of retirement.

But their first game was a total dud as they scored the fewest points (7) in a game with reigning MVP Matthew Stafford at quarterback, and Garrett, looking sluggish, failed to register a single pressure for the first time since 2018. Donald was inactive.

Was it due to the travel plan that saw the Rams arrive almost a week after the 49ers did? We’ll find out when they host the Giants next Monday night, but the Rams were humbled immediately by Kyle Shanahan’s 49ers, who have been a thorn in their side over the years.

Reminder: The last 20 teams with +500 or better preseason Super Bowl odds failed to win the Super Bowl. Sean McVay’s got work to do.

The 49ers Look Great

After tons of off-field NFL news this offseason, the 49ers looked sharp and ready in Australia. Mike Evans made key third-down catches and caught a touchdown, Deebo Samuel scored in his return game, left tackle Trent Williams handled Myles Garrett, and linebacker Fred Warner looked like the best linebacker in the NFL again.

The 49ers are sure to be one of the biggest risers in the Super Bowl odds after this 20-point win. With the Dolphins and Cardinals up next, a 3-0 start is very possible. Not bad for a team thought to be on the decline with aging stars George Kittle and Christian McCaffrey.

Seattle Still Has the Top Defense

Lest we forget, the Seahawks are the defending champions. Their top-ranked defense had to be great after quarterback Sam Darnold (hip) was injured on the opening drive. Fortunately, he could only miss a game or two.

But Seattle’s defense intercepted Drake Maye three times in the fourth quarter, and backup Drew Lock made enough plays to get the 13-10 win. Darnold should be back before Week 5 vs. the 49ers, and Seattle doesn’t meet the Rams until Christmas.

The NFL betting odds still favor all three teams in 2026, so there’s a decent chance this division, which plays the stacked AFC West, determines the winner of Super Bowl LXI too

Adam Archuleta@AdamArchuleta
Majoring in man coverage with all the motions and shifts the 49ers have can be a nightmare and lead to major assignment errors, especially with the new shifts and motions they showed. Not to mention, the NFL as a whole is trending hard toward zone coverage and split-safety principles.

from https://theramswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/rams/2026/09/11/rams-pff-grades-week-1-49ers-best-worst-players/91708922007/?taid=6aa43bfcd5b7470001e016ae&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=twitter

They’ll now try to flush this game from their memory before turning their attention to the New York Giants in Week 2, but before we look ahead, it’s time to reflect on this loss with Pro Football Focus grades.

Below are the best and worst performers from the Rams’ loss to the 49ers.

Top 5 offense

LG Steve Avila: 84.9
C Coleman Shelton: 83.2
WR Puka Nacua: 76.0
RB Blake Corum: 70.3
LT Alaric Jackson: 67.9

Your fantasy edge starts here Sync your league for custom roster advice, projections, and tools to win your matchups every week.

Avila allowed two pressures, one of which was a hit on Stafford, and he was outstanding in the run game with a team-high grade of 90.3.

Shelton also dominated as a run blocker with a grade of 88.2, allowing only one pressure. Jackson was just OK in this one as the starting left tackle, allowing three pressures with a grade of 65.9 in the run game.

Nacua led the team with 74 yards receiving, 48 more than any other player.

Corum was the Rams’ leading rusher with 54 yards on the ground on just 10 carries.

Top 5 defense

CB Trent McDuffie: 83.4
DB Quentin Lake: 78.8
OLB Josaiah Stewart: 75.9
DT Kobie Turner: 75.3
S Kam Curl: 70.8

The Rams didn’t get the win but McDuffie’s debut went well. He only allowed one catch for 13 yards on three targets, breaking up two passes with one tackle for a loss.

Lake was picked on throughout the game, seeing 10 passes thrown his way. He allowed seven catches but they went for a total of just 54 yards. He also had an interception and a quality pass breakup in man coverage.

Stewart made five tackles and had one QB hit, which was one of just two landed on Purdy all game long; Nate Landman had the other.

Turner didn’t have any pressures but he batted one pass and had seven total tackles.

Curl left the game early but he had three tackles and gave up just 13 yards in coverage before exiting.

wv wrote:

Orlovsky really blasted Chris Shula

where is that. If it’s a vid what’s the time frame.

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.”

joemad wrote:

I can’t believe that New England QB was in the MVP running with Stafford last year…..

The Schedule King.

Who as we know does not have a good record against top defenses.

Julian Love with the INT ‼️

Two picks on the night for Drake Maye!

(via @NFL)pic.twitter.com/r45Oz7fFHB

— NFL on ESPN (@ESPNNFL) September 10, 2026

Jackson Durham@JDurham_FBall
Rams restructured Quentin Lake’s contract today to become cap compliant according to Over the Cap

The move puts the team at $2.8 million in cap space for this season and added 2 additional void years to the deal for cap purposes.

Spotrac@spotrac
The #Rams converted $4.285M of S Quentin Lake’s salary into signing bonus, adding two void years, creating $3.4M of 2026 cap space.

Lake has 3-years, $37.25M remaining on his contract, including a fully guaranteed $12.75M for 2027.