Niners<\/a> are 1-0 to start the season. So are circadian rhythms.<\/p>\nThe 49ers landed Down Under a week early, swallowed the brutal 16-hour flight and 17-hour time shift, practiced, met the locals and adjusted their body clocks like professionals.<\/p>\n
The Rams? They sent a few clipboard-toting interns ahead, convinced themselves staying on Pacific Time was visionary science and touched down in Victoria roughly 29 hours before kickoff.<\/p>\n
That isn\u2019t cutting-edge logistics. That\u2019s arriving at a heavyweight title fight straight off an all-nighter.<\/p>\n
When the Rams wake up back in Southern California, will they even remember this fever dream? Or will their minds simply block out four quarters of 49ers domination?<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t write this off as purely jet lag over jet motion, though. That lets off McVay\u2019s adenosine-soaked brain trust way too easily.<\/p>\n
The NFL is playing games in foreign lands because they\u2019re trying to expand the league\u2019s reach. The Niners understood the assignment and put on a football clinic for the fine Aussies.<\/p>\n
It was cohesive, it was nasty and it looked totally sustainable stateside.<\/p>\n
The offense was built on power runs and screen passes \u2014 simple but effective. Christian McCaffrey wasn\u2019t used as an every-down battering ram \u2014 a safety blanket for Shanahan \u2014 but rather as just another cog in the offensive machine (which, of course, he\u2019s not), carrying the ball only 10 times to rookie Kaelon Black\u2019s 14 totes, but making each of them count, going for 6.8 yards on average.<\/p>\n
Brock Purdy didn\u2019t look like a guy playing on upside-down turf. No, he operated with MVP-grade clarity, dealing clinical strikes left, right, center and hitting the Rams over the top when they felt a bit greedy.<\/p>\n
Mike Evans looked every bit like the big-bodied, dominating X receiver this franchise has craved since Brandon Aiyuk\u2019s 2023 peak. Actually, he looked better.<\/p>\n
Up front, San Francisco\u2019s offensive line simply redrew the line of scrimmage. Kyle Juszczyk hammered daylight between the tackles like a bulldozer, surely reminding the Australian fans of legendary Wallabies prop James Slipper.<\/p>\n
Deebo Samuel brought a spark with a vintage kick return and a receiving touchdown. He jumped in on the blocking, too, springing big runs in the process.<\/p>\n
George Kittle, while not fully his ferocious self yet following that January Achilles injury, was steady and threatening when he was on the field.<\/p>\n
Fred Warner looked like the single best defensive player on Earth. After missing the back half of last season, he swarmed sideline to sideline like he\u2019d been shot out of a cannon, punching out balls with pinpoint precision and winning every one-on-one battle he saw.<\/p>\n
Nick Bosa, fresh off his third ACL reconstruction, battered the edge with unhindered speed and power. Next to him, offseason addition Osa Odighizuwa racked up four quarterback hits from defensive tackle and lived in the backfield rent-free.<\/p>\n
And behind them, new defensive coordinator Raheem Morris unleashed an abrasive, funky dime package that completely scrambled Stafford\u2019s processing abilities on critical downs. (Whatever processing abilities made it to the Southern Hemisphere, that is.) It was a tactical checkmate pregame and on both sides during the game.<\/p>\n
It became so bleak that McVay pulled Stafford, the reigning MVP, late in the fourth quarter. It wasn\u2019t an injury; it was mercy.<\/p>\n
Oh, and did you see Myles Garrett? Where was the Rams\u2019 ultimate trump card? Every time I checked, he was breathing heavily on the sidelines.<\/p>\n
It all comes back to one truth: One team came to play. One team just showed up and thought they would win anyway.<\/p>\n
The Rams might end up being the best team in the NFL at the end of this season, but they looked like the kind of lower-level team Ohio State schedules for an early-season feel-good win on Thursday. Or was it Friday? Was it any day at all for the Rams?<\/p>\n
Of course there will be countless overreactions, in both directions, to the Week 1 game. The Rams will be called frauds, the Niners will be anointed \u201cback.\u201d And, again, those things might prove to be true. But Thursday\/Friday was a truly strange experiment \u2014 one that is difficult to properly gauge. Take it all with a copious amount of salt (and a Coopers, if you have one available).<\/p>\n
All that said, wouldn\u2019t you rather be the Niners right now?<\/p>\n
The flight back to California is just about as long for both teams, and one of those flights is going to be a hell of a lot more joyful.<\/p>\n
The Rams might argue that they won\u2019t deal with time zone confusion on the way back \u2014 they never adjusted in the first place \u2014 but is anyone going to believe their sleep science now? The Niners will deal with jet lag on the way back, sure, but they\u2019re doing it at 1-0 overall and a critical 1-0 in the division, with cozy dates against Miami and Arizona waiting back home. That will make the tough bounce-back all the easier.<\/p>\n
In the Australian winter, the 49ers won the battle against sleep and they won the football game.<\/p>\n
And come the American winter, that might look like the exact moment the NFC West was won.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hubris is an expensive item to drag across the world, and the Los Angeles Rams just paid the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":997911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2080],"tags":[220,7,1921,3171,929,58,6,1161,252,2624,2623,9,2833],"class_list":["post-997910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco-49ers","tag-49ers","tag-football","tag-inside-sports","tag-inside-the-san-francisco-49ers","tag-latest-headlines","tag-los-angeles-rams","tag-nfl","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-49ers","tag-sanfrancisco","tag-sanfrancisco49ers","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117252607432149418","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=997910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/997911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=997910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=997910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=997910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}