The Rams did worse than arrive late.
They didn’t show up at all.
Amid a weeklong barrage of criticism, the Rams didn’t land in Melbourne for their season opener Thursday until 28 hours before kickoff while the San Francisco 49ers had been there all week.
Turns out, the 49ers were smart, and the Rams were sorry.
The 49ers were terrific, and the Rams were terrible.
The 49ers energetically dominated in a 27-7 victory while the Rams exhaustedly despaired in front of more than 100,000 fans at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, a venue that hosts Australian rules football games that aren’t this ugly.
What idiot recently wrote that these Rams were going to go undefeated?
This idiot, and don’t dare say you thought that prediction wouldn’t last one game. One game?
Who knew that football’s super team was capable of being super bad?
Who could have guessed that football genius Sean McVay would be so badly outplanned, so badly outcoached, and so unimaginably wrong on the game’s transformative play?
Who could have predicted that defending league MVP Matthew Stafford would throw high, throw short, and basically throw an array of balls that landed down under?
Who knew that star offseason addition Myles Garrett would get pushed around, thrown down and eventually turned into human Vegemite?
G’night, mate!
“This is a humbling day for us,” said McVay, who knows what’s coming. “There’s going to be a lot of narratives that appropriately put the blame on me.”
As if being ripped nationwide for his travel plans wasn’t painful enough, McVay will also be skewered for a baffling decision on a third-quarter play that could have rescued the Rams but instead doomed them.
With the Rams trailing 17-7, they marched to the 49ers’ one-yard line, where they faced fourth and goal.
Do they pass to football’s most prolific red-zone receiver in Davante Adams? Do they run the ball with scoring machine Kyren Williams?
Neither. McVay called a quarterback sneak for 38-year-old Stafford, despite the fact that he had not scored a rushing touchdown in four years and was 0 for 2 on fourth-down sneaks last year.
The 49ers unsurprisingly held and promptly drove 99 yards to score on a 15-yard pass from Brock Purdy to Deebo Samuel between three confused defenders to clinch it.
”The first thing I look at is where can I improve?” said McVay, admirably accountable as always. “Where can I put our players in better positions to have successful outcomes?”
Stafford blamed himself, saying, “I’ve just got to find a way to get in.”
It’s hard to fault Stafford for not making a play that his body just can’t make, but it’s fair to wonder if the travel and short turnaround impacted his worst big game in several years.
He was held under 10 points for just the second time in his last 85 starts. He missed on seven of his first 11 passes, threw for just 155 yards and had no touchdown passes with one interception.
“Obviously not the way you want to start the season,” he said.
While it seemed obvious that he was jet-lagged, Stafford rejected the notion that the Rams’ unique travel schedule — engineered to keep their body clocks on California time for a 10:35 a.m. Melbourne start — was the reason for his malaise.
”When the ball was kicked off we were ready to play,” he said. “We just didn’t do it at a high enough clip today.”
Many critics have called the Rams crazy since they announced the schedule last week. This is even though a similarly quick stop in London last year led to a waxing of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
But, bottom line, this game proved those critics — and the early-arriving 49ers — right.
“I don’t believe that’s why we didn’t play well enough, I really don’t,” protested McVay. “They outplayed us in every phase.”
Perhaps nobody was outplayed worse than Garrett, the two-time defensive player of the year who was arguably The Most Irrelevant Player Of This Game.
He had no sacks or quarterback hits. He was shut out in those two categories for only the third time in two years. He was so invisible, his name was never called and the TV cameras never focused on him until he was standing on the sidelines.
No, Garrett also wouldn’t publicly say that the trip timing was a factor despite loads of evidence to the contrary.
“I don’t doubt the decision making of my coach and organization, I think they did what was best for us and we didn’t execute on the field when we needed to,” he said.
To add injury to insult, Garrett acknowledged he was affected by a sore left knee that apparently isn’t healing.
“This was the worst version of myself that I put out there,” he said. “I’ve got to find a way to recover and get back to the player I can be.”
Recently un-retired star Aaron Donald didn’t make the trip, but here’s guessing he’ll be by Garrett’s side in 11 days for the home opener against the New York Giants, so that will help. The extended rest afforded the team will also help.
The Rams aren’t this bad. In fact, they’re still loaded and worthy of their status as Super Bowl favorites.
But this will be forever known as a day when football’s smartest organization got outsmarted, when football’s best coach fumbled and when the San Francisco 49ers turned football’s giants into so much shrimp on the barbie.
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