The Rams have taken an unusual but practical step ahead of their Week 1 meeting with the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne, using four players as travel-test volunteers before the team’s trans-Pacific trip. It is a clear sign that Sean McVay wants the opening-week logistics as settled as possible before the Rams Vs 49ers game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
In the spring, Kevin Dotson and Kyren Williams made the journey from Los Angeles to Australia as goodwill ambassadors. Later in the spring, Xavier Smith and Tyler Davis did the same. The idea was simple: send a small group first, learn from the experience and use that information to shape the full team trip.
Kevin Dotson said the group was effectively being put to use for the wider good of the roster, while Xavier Smith felt the early travel had already shown the Rams what to expect. In short, the team now has a live reference point for a journey that could easily have become a distraction if it had been left to guesswork.
Why the Rams are delaying departure
The Rams will board a plane bound for Melbourne on Tuesday night and are due to land in Australia on Thursday morning. After a night’s sleep, they will face the 49ers at 10:35 a.m. local time, which is 5:35 p.m. PDT. That timing underlines the scale of the challenge: a 16-hour flight, then a short turnaround before kickoff.
McVay said the timing was chosen after consultation with Reggie Scott, and that the Rams trust their group to handle it. There are different approaches and theories, he said, but the hope is that the late departure will work out. The basic logic is familiar: arrive too early and you can spend too long on the road; arrive too late and you risk being flat on game day. The Rams are betting on the middle ground.
Kevin Dotson was more blunt about the workload. He said the experience would be exhausting regardless, but added that the rest between arrival and kickoff should be enough to keep the players ready. That is the trade-off here: limit the time spent in transit, then rely on recovery, sleep and routine to carry the team into the opener.
A familiar blueprint for a different trip
The Rams are not approaching this as if it were entirely new territory. Last season, they stayed on the East Coast after playing the Baltimore Ravens in Baltimore and then travelled to London the day before a game. That move worked well enough, and the Rams beat the Jacksonville Jaguars 35-7.
Xavier Smith said the team felt the earlier Australia trips confirmed the method, and that it was like mimicking the same blueprint all over again. That is the key point. The trip is unusual, but the Rams are treating it as a preparation problem rather than a novelty.
Last week, the 49ers arrived in Australia, so both teams will now be dealing with the same broader challenge of adjusting to conditions ahead of kickoff. The Rams’ hope is that their travel plan gives them a cleaner landing, steadier rhythm and fewer surprises when the game arrives on Thursday morning.
For a Week 1 opener, that matters. The football will still decide everything, but the Rams have at least tried to remove one variable before meeting San Francisco in Melbourne.
