Rams’ problems go deeper than jet lag after Melbourne humiliation

MELBOURNE, Australia — The Los Angeles Rams spent about 15 hours flying to Melbourne and less than 40 hours in Australia before flying 15 hours back home. Somehow, the most uncomfortable part of the trip was still the three hours they spent on the field.

They arrived with the reigning NFL MVP, the reigning Defensive Player of the Year and the expectations of the heaviest Super Bowl favorite in over a decade. They left with a 27-7 loss to the San Francisco 49ers and a reminder that championships are won on the field, where offseason acquisitions and preseason predictions offer little protection against a better football team.

And right now, the 49ers are a better football team.

The first NFL regular-season game in Australia drew 100,021 to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, a remarkable setting for an occasion the league treated like a miniature Super Bowl. The 49ers approached it that way, too, arriving a week before kickoff, adjusting to their surroundings and giving a city and country a chance to embrace them.

The Rams essentially treated it like an extended layover on their way back to Los Angeles. They landed one day before kickoff, played the game and headed straight home, treating a trip across the Pacific as if they were flying to Phoenix for an early-season game against the Cardinals.

That approach was always going to become a story if they lost. After this performance, it became an invitation to question everything about their preparation.

“I don't believe that's why we didn't play well enough. I really don't,” Rams coach Sean McVay said. “It's easy in hindsight to say it was a miss. Those are responsibilities that I'll take.”

McVay needs to own that decision. Choosing to arrive on the eve of a game after a roughly 15-hour flight deserves scrutiny, particularly when the opponent took such a different approach and looked considerably more prepared.

But allowing the travel discussion to explain away what happened would give the Rams an excuse they have not earned. Based on what these teams showed, I don't believe arriving a week earlier would have changed the winner. The Rams could have spent a month in Melbourne and still needed to play substantially better to beat San Francisco.

The comparison to last season's London trip does little to settle the argument. Defensive lineman Kobie Turner pointed to that experience afterward, noting that the Rams used a similar approach before beating Jacksonville.

“We took the same steps last year when we went to go play the Jaguars in London. We beat them,” Turner said.

But the Rams had played the Ravens and remained in Baltimore for a week before taking a roughly seven-hour flight to London. They had already moved their operation to the East Coast before crossing the Atlantic. That is a considerably different proposition from leaving Los Angeles for Melbourne.

A closer comparison would have been spending a week in Singapore before flying to Melbourne the day before the game. The point is that the Rams' successful London trip did not make these two journeys interchangeable.

Still, the players were consistent in rejecting travel as an explanation, and their descriptions of what actually happened were more revealing than any discussion of sleep schedules.

“We didn't do the things that we are accustomed to doing,” said Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford. “That's just communicating, operating, being on the same page. Too many times we were on different pages.”

That is a troubling assessment from the leader of a team expected to contend for a championship. Stafford understood where the responsibility began.

“That starts with me,” he said. “I'm the guy that's communicating all that stuff.”

The reigning MVP completed 15 of 25 passes for 155 yards, with no touchdowns and an interception. The Rams need considerably more from him, and the defining moment came when they needed considerably less than a yard.

Stafford was stopped on a quarterback sneak near the goal line, wasting an opportunity to pull the Rams back into the game. San Francisco then drove 99 yards for a touchdown, turning a chance for Los Angeles to regain momentum into the sequence that effectively settled the afternoon.

“Yeah, yeah,” Stafford said when asked whether the sneak was a called play. “I just got to find a way to get it.”

That failure belonged to more than the quarterback. The Rams could not move the ball a few feet when they needed to, then could not prevent their opponent from moving it the length of the field.

“I know defensively anytime we let a team drive from the one and score a touchdown, we're not going to win a lot of games that way,” Turner said.

Which brings us to Myles Garrett, whose first game in a Rams uniform ended without a tackle and with a far more concerning explanation than jet lag.

Asked whether his knee was painful, Garrett answered, “Yeah.” Asked whether he had felt fully healthy entering the game, he made clear that he had not.

“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 to get back to the player I know I can be and that I've shown I've been before.”

He declined to elaborate on the specifics of the injury, but his description of how it affected his play was striking.

“When I was out there, I was a little bit more focused on myself, trying to stay healthy, not what they were doing,” Garrett said. “That showed. I wasn't what I needed to be for me and my team.”

That should concern the Rams far more than how many nights they spent in an Australian hotel. Their championship expectations depend heavily on Garrett being the player who won Defensive Player of the Year. In his debut, he was trying to protect himself while the Rams needed him to disrupt someone else.

Stafford and Garrett cannot do everything. But when a team enters the season as a heavy Super Bowl favorite largely because it has those two players, it needs them to make a difference. Neither delivered anything close to the performance those expectations require.

McVay apologized to Australian fans for the showing and acknowledged that San Francisco outplayed his team in every phase. There was little to dispute in his assessment.

“Sometimes sports can humble you and today was one of those days,” he said. “I make no excuses. Whether you want to say it's travel, whatever. We just weren't good enough in that window.”

One game does not erase the Rams' potential, just as an impressive offseason did not guarantee they would realize it. There is time for Stafford to find his rhythm, Garrett to get healthier and McVay to get this team playing to its capabilities. There is also now evidence of how much work remains.

The flight home will end. The questions about this team will follow the Rams back to Los Angeles. They can fix their next itinerary with an earlier departure. Closing the distance between the team they were expected to be and the one that showed up in Melbourne will take a lot more than that.