The Rams are betting they can beat jet lag the same way they beat the Jaguars in London last year: by not giving it time to matter.
For their trip to Melbourne, Los Angeles is planning to arrive just 24 hours before kickoff, a sharp contrast to the 49ers, who chose to get there a week early. It’s an aggressive approach, especially with a 16-hour flight and a 17-hour time difference waiting on the other end.
That plan didn’t come together without serious preparation. Earlier this year, the Rams sent several employees to Australia after learning they would host the league’s first regular-season game in Melbourne.
Because no NFL team had ever played there before, the logistics staff treated the trip like a full dress rehearsal. They mapped the bus ride from the hotel to the stadium and worked with the hotel’s culinary crew to build the player meal plan before and after the game.
Sean McVay wanted more than a dry run of the itinerary. He asked the logistics crew to track the travel itself in detail: how the flight felt, how much sleep they got, when fatigue hit, when they started feeling better, how long it took for their circadian rhythm to adjust, and what recovery looked like once they returned to Los Angeles.
That data hunt traces back to what the Rams did last year. They flew from Baltimore to London on game day, beat the Jaguars, and then flew back to Los Angeles that same night without staying in a hotel. This trip is a much bigger ask in terms of distance and time zones, but the Rams are clearly trying to see whether the same basic formula can work again.
The setup has been discussed plenty already, but the Rams’ plan is more than just a headline about when they’ll land. It’s a test case - for the itinerary, for the recovery process, and maybe for whether other NFL teams would ever be willing to try something similar.
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Watson and McDuffie arrive with different resumes, but the common thread is that each gives the Rams a real chance to raise the floor of a unit that needed fresh answers. The broader league context matters here too, with Chris Johnson landing in Miami, Benjamin St-Juste going to Green Bay and Jamel Dean heading to Pittsburgh, but Los Angeles may have made the most intriguing bet on upside. How quickly that overhaul clicks will go a long way toward showing whether the Rams just added bodies or truly changed the shape of their secondary. [Read more 🡒]
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Seahawks Just Sent Their Strongest Signal Yet About Melbourne
The Seahawks are pushing deeper into the Australia-New Zealand market, and their latest move gives the plan some real structure. Seattle announced a strategic partnership with Collingwood, linking the NFL club with one of the AFLs biggest names as part of its marketing rights under the leagues Global Markets program. It is the kind of cross-sport alignment the NFL has been chasing overseas, with both sides now trying to grow interest by connecting established fan bases rather than starting from scratch.
Melbourne is a big part of the picture, too, because the two clubs will co-host a kids AFL and NFL crossover flag football clinic there. For Seattle, it is another sign that this is more than a branding exercise and more about building a foothold in a region where competition for attention is fierce. For the Rams and the rest of the NFC West, it is a reminder that the Seahawks are still looking for every possible edge off the field as much as on it. [Read more 🡒]