Did the Rams lose because they arrived in Australia too late to settle in, or because the 49ers were simply the better team on the day?
That was the tension hanging over the NFL’s first game in Australia, where San Francisco beat Los Angeles 27-7 in Melbourne and turned what could have been a travel story into something more complicated. The Rams had just hours between arrival and kickoff. The 49ers had been in Australia for days. By the end, though, the scoreboard and the way the game unfolded gave McVay’s defense of the schedule only so much room to breathe.
McVay started his postgame press conference by warning that there would be “narratives” from the loss and that others would “appropriately, put the blame on me.” He accepted responsibility, but he did not publicly regret the decision to arrive in Australia less than 30 hours before kickoff. Asked about how the Rams slept on the eve of the game after getting there just hours earlier, McVay said he felt his team was ready to play.
The performance on the field made that harder to sell. Los Angeles was outgained by nearly 100 yards, went just 2 of 9 on third down and had no answers for San Francisco’s star players. The Rams’ offense never found much rhythm, and when they abandoned their running game, they became one-dimensional and predictable. Matthew Stafford finished with 155 passing yards, no touchdowns and one interception.
San Francisco, meanwhile, kept stretching the game away. The 49ers scored the final 24 points, and by the time McVay pulled Stafford with 3:05 left, the Rams had already turned the ball over on the ensuing possession and watched the 49ers tack on a field goal. It was the kind of finish that made the result feel less like a strange one-off and more like a team taking control once the game tilted.
Brock Purdy was central to that. He threw for three touchdowns and 205 yards, and the postgame conversation around him looked different from the old underdog framing that once followed him. That label no longer fit the way he played in Melbourne, or the way the 49ers handled the stage.
Purdy said the atmosphere mattered to him, too. “The energy of the Australian crowd was special,” he said.
Trent Williams put the quarterback’s steadiness in sharper terms: Purdy “commands the huddle and never gets rattled.”
That composure showed up in a game that could have been reduced to logistics. The 49ers arrived days in advance. The Rams did not. But the final margin, the late scoring burst and the way San Francisco controlled the second half made it difficult to pin everything on travel alone. McVay said the 49ers were the No. 1 reason the Rams lost, and the game backed him up.
It also fit an opening week that has already produced a reminder not to trust preseason assumptions too much. The first two games of the NFL season have already reminded fans to expect the unexpected, and the 49ers’ blowout in Melbourne was part of that.
San Francisco even handed out game balls afterward to linebacker Fred Warner and strength and conditioning coach Dustin Perry, a nod to the work behind a trip that ended with the 49ers opening their season in style. For the Rams, it was a blunt start: a long flight, a short turnaround and a loss that left them with a travel defense that only partly explained what happened.