The Rams are heading into 2026 with Super Bowl hopes, and their first test comes with a lot more weight than a normal opener. Week 1 against the 49ers isn’t just a chance to start clean - it’s the kind of game that can shape the way a season feels from the jump.
The numbers back that up. Rotowire looked at Week 1 results across the last 10 NFL seasons and found a pretty clear pattern: teams that win their opener are far more likely to keep climbing.
A Week 1 win has lined up with a 59.0 percent playoff chance, while a loss drops that number to 25.6 percent. The same trend shows up across the board.
Winning the opener has meant a 35.3 percent shot at a division title, 32.7 percent to reach the divisional round, 19.2 percent to get to the conference championship game, 9.0 percent to reach the Super Bowl and 4.5 percent to actually win it. Lose in Week 1, and those odds fall to 16.0 percent, 18.6 percent, 6.4 percent, 3.8 percent and 1.9 percent, respectively.
There’s also this: the last team to win the Super Bowl after losing in Week 1 was the 2023 Kansas City Chiefs. Eight of the last 10 Super Bowl winners opened with a victory.
For Sean McVay’s Rams, Week 1 has usually been a good place to start. They are 7-2 in openers under McVay, and the two losses came in 2022, the year after their Super Bowl run, and in 2025, when injuries hit at wide receiver and along the offensive line. When the Rams have been healthy, they’ve tended to begin the year on the front foot.
That history includes a mostly strong run of opening results since McVay took over. The Rams have made the playoffs every season they’ve won in Week 1 except 2019, and the yearly list tells the story of how often an opener has set the tone.
In 2025, Los Angeles edged the Texans 14-9 when Matthew Stafford found Davis Allen in the end zone in the third quarter and the defense finished the job. In 2024, the Rams lost 26-20 in overtime to the Lions without Steve Avila and left tackle Alaric Jackson, while Cooper Kupp started the year on injured reserve, but they still found a way into the postseason.
In 2023, they beat the Seahawks 30-13 after scoring 23 unanswered points in the second half and went on to finish second in the NFC West and make the playoffs.
The 2022 opener was the rough one. The Bills beat the Rams 31-10, and injuries on the offensive line that began in Week 1 helped drag the season in a bad direction.
That was McVay’s first Week 1 loss. Before that, the Rams had opened 2021 with a 34-14 win over the Bears, highlighted by Matthew Stafford’s 53-yard touchdown to Van Jefferson, a clear early sign of what that team would become.
In 2020, they beat the Cowboys 20-17, with rookie safety Jordan Fuller’s tackle on CeeDee Lamb inside the 10 helping decide the game. In 2019, they beat the Panthers 30-27 but still missed the playoffs, even after starting 3-0.
In 2018, they rolled past the Raiders 33-13 and went on to finish 13-3 and reach the Super Bowl. And in McVay’s first game in 2017, the Rams crushed the Colts 46-9, with Jared Goff throwing for 300 yards for the first time in his career and McVay becoming the youngest head coach to win in his NFL debut.
This year’s opener adds another layer because it comes against the 49ers. That’s never an easy assignment, even if the Rams have won four of the last five meetings. McVay is 8-11 against San Francisco since 2017, a stretch that included nine losses in 10 games at one point.
The setting makes it even more unusual. The Rams won’t be opening at SoFi Stadium.
They’ll face the 49ers at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia, in a Week 1 game that comes with a 17-hour time difference. McVay described the adjustment this way: “You trust your players.
You really set some of the foundational things that you want to do, and then you have to be ready to adjust and adapt accordingly,” said McVay. “But it is very different.”
The 49ers arrived in Australia this week, while the Rams are scheduled to travel Wednesday and arrive in Melbourne on Thursday, just before kickoff. That leaves Los Angeles with little more than a walk-through before game time.
Nothing about one win in Australia would lock in a playoff berth or a trip to the Super Bowl. But for a Rams team with those kinds of expectations, starting 1-0 against a division rival would send exactly the kind of message they want to send.
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