49ers early Australia arrival puts all pressure on them not Rams

Thursday didn’t exist for Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers.They boarded a two-story jumbo jet a little before midnight Wednesday evening, and by the time it touched down in Melbourne, Australia, the sun was shining on Friday morning local time — six full days ahead of the Rams’ arrival for their globe-trotting, season-opening showdown.The teams’ divergent travel plans will be one of the many subplots when the NFC West rivals meet on foreign soil.They both consulted experts, conducted their own investigations and surveyed their players — and came to wildly different conclusions.

According to ESPN, the Rams won’t arrive until a day before the 10:35 a.m.Friday local (5:35 p.m.

Thursday PT) kickoff.The strategy worked for Sean McVay’s squad last year in London, eight hours ahead of Los Angeles.Whether it’s the right approach for the 17-hour time difference they’ll experience after flying 16 hours and almost 8,000 miles across nothing but water remains to be seen.When the Niners sent ahead their own exploratory committee to study the effects, according to general manager John Lynch this week on KNBR, “they all said, you know, for three days you feel out of whack.

You’re just not quite there.”The Rams haven’t discussed their travel plans publicly, but according to ESPN, they did the same thing and instead “came to the conclusion that the best way to handle it would be to prepare at home, fly as close to the game as possible, let adrenaline carry them through the game and then fly right home and rest up on the back end.”It’s impossible to know which team chose the better option as it pertains to Week 1.But the different ways they’re going about it means at least one thing:This game matters a whole lot more for the 49ers.They’re the ones upending their lives for a week and doing a full reset of their body clocks.The Rams, if all goes according to plan, will play the game as if it’s Thursday night in Los Angeles and hope their brains don�...