Rams vs. 49ers Week 1

For their historic Week 1 opener at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia, the 49ers are arriving nine days early, while the Rams plan to land just one day before kickoff and fly home immediately after.

The Rams strategy is actually based on the fact that they explicitly tested this by sending staff members on trial flights between Los Angeles and Melbourne to track jet lag patterns. They found that entering right before the game allowed them to outrun the worst of the circadian disruption by relying on adrenaline, mirroring their highly successful 2025 "in-and-out" trip to London where they decisively beat the Jacksonville Jaguars.

The 49ers approach is obvious in that arriving 9 days early allows the body's internal clock to shift to Australian time at the standard rate of about one hour per day. So, players will be fully alert, well-rested, and physically adjusted by kickoff. However, they will have to deal with the jet-lag process while there and they will have another acclimation to deal with once they return to the US for week 2.

The potential downsides to the Rams approach is obvious as players face a grueling 15-hour flight immediately before playing, raising risks of physical stiffness and dehydration. However, since they are never in Australia long enough for their circadian rhythms to shift, they return home with their bodies still synced to US time. And nicely for the Rams, they play on Monday Night Football in Week 2, giving them an extra rest day.

Interestingly enough, the research shows that for all NFL games played outside US time zones where the two teams took different approaches to arrival, there is no discernable difference in success The record is 11-9-1 of long-stay versus short-stay teams and the spread record is about the same. This is small sample size, but no real signal as to the best approach has emerged here.