09/02/26 02:16:00
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09/02 14:14 CDT The 49ers set to embark on the NFL's longest road trip for the
season opener in Australia
The 49ers set to embark on the NFL's longest road trip for the season opener in
Australia
By JOSH DUBOW
AP Pro Football Writer
SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) --- The San Francisco 49ers got instructions for how
to prepare for the longest road trip in NFL history as they get set to depart
the Bay Area for Melbourne, Australia, late Wednesday night for the season
opener against the Los Angeles Rams next week.
They were given advice on how to eat and hydrate, what to do after arriving and
the best options of when to sleep on the approximately 8,000-mile flight that
will take about 16 hours and cross the international dateline that will make a
Wednesday departure turn into a Friday arrival.
Niners defensive lineman and avid world traveler Keion White has a simple
approach.
"I don't know if you can OD on melatonin, but I'm going to try," he said. "Take
five melatonins, go to sleep on the plane. As soon as I wake up, I'm taking
five more. Just keep rolling like that."
While some members of the 49ers organization, including coach Kyle Shanahan,
have been lamenting the season-opening trip, White is embracing it after
already playing games in Germany and London earlier in his career.
He plans to watch TikTok before he arrives to get ideas of what to do and then
get on public transportation and explore after team meetings on the first day
to help make sure he stays up all day and gets onto a normal sleep schedule as
quickly as possible.
"I'm an experience guy," he said. "If I'm up, walking around, just going to go
do stuff, I'll be up. Just go explore. We will have meetings and everything
like that, but once I do that, I'm out exploring Melbourne and getting around
town."
Both the 49ers and Rams studied the process intently in the offseason, even
sending advance staffers to Australia to report back on how long it took to
adjust to the time change. But they came up with far different answers leading
up to the game on Sept. 11.
The Niners will leave Wednesday night in California, arrive in Melbourne on
Friday morning and then take time to adjust to the new time zone. They will
hold a light practice on Saturday, take Sunday off and then have a normal
stretch of three practices on Monday through Wednesday before playing the
opener on Friday morning.
They will leave right after the game and are expected to land back in the Bay
Area on Friday afternoon. They then will be able to take the weekend off before
preparing for the Week 2 game against Miami on Sept. 20.
"It's a big adjustment on the body," Shanahan said. "So, the recommendation for
everybody has been to tell us when to go, and it's made a lot of sense. I know
how our players feel also. I was a little bit on the fence. Science wasn't and
what I was reported on and our players weren't at all. So that helped me get
off the fence."
The Rams consulted with their own scientists and came up with the opposite
approach. They will do most of their practice at home and aren't expected to
arrive in Australia until about 24 hours before the game, hoping the short stay
leads to no jet lag.
The better option might not be known until after the game.
The approach by the Niners has made the past few days a whirlwind. The players
got the weekend off after playing the final exhibition game on Thursday night
in Las Vegas and resumed practice on Monday --- the day after the roster was
reduced to 53 players.
The front office had to make those cuts, put together a practice squad and
figure out which players would be healthy for Week 1 to make sure they had the
correct roster in place before departing.
"There's a lot behind the scenes," general manager John Lynch said. "Our
logistics folks, our folks that work in the cafe, have just gone to tremendous
lengths, our health and performance team, to make sure that we're giving our
players the best opportunity to feel right when they play down there in
Australia. Everything from getting visas, which much more complicated than I
ever knew, and they've been outstanding. ... Hats off to those guys for pulling
off a monumental task, and it's not done yet."
Lynch said he had to make sure all the practice squad players he wanted to sign
had passports with one needing his parents to send it overnight. It was an even
bigger scramble for offensive lineman Jarrett Patterson, who was acquired in a
trade from Houston on Sunday.
"They were like, hey, do you have a passport? We're leaving for Australia in
three days," he said. "I was like, ?Whoa!' It's obviously a quick turnaround
getting here a couple hours after I found out and now getting ready for
Australia."
But in all, the players are welcoming the challenge and opportunity. Cornerback
Deommodore Lenoir said he'd travel 30 hours if needed to play in an NFL game
and rookie De'Zhaun Stribling has a must-see item on his to-do list before
making his debut.
"I kind of want to see a kangaroo, just because," he said. "To see how big they
are."
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