By Paul Muchowski, Ph.D.
A year ago the Los Angeles Rams did something in London that made the rest of the league look overcautious.
The Jacksonville Jaguars, their opponent that week, had done it by the book. They landed in England on Tuesday and spent five days letting their bodies catch up to Greenwich Mean Time. The Rams had played in Baltimore the Sunday before, beaten the Ravens 17 to 3, and then simply stayed on the East Coast, practicing at the Orioles' ballpark until Friday night. They flew overnight, landed Saturday morning, and played Sunday. Jacksonville's head coach, Liam Coen, was asked whether the extra days gave his team an edge. "Is it an advantage?" he said. "I don't know, there's sports science that supports both."
The Rams won 35 to 7, and the lesson seemed obvious. You do not have to adjust to a new time zone. You can just refuse.
Was It the Sleep?
It is worth asking, because a lot of people drew a conclusion from that game, including, apparently, the Rams.
The honest answer is that nobody knows. The Rams were the better team that day by a wide margin, and a 28-point win has many fathers. But two facts about the London trip are easy to miss, and both of them matter.
The first is that the time change was only five hours, and the Rams had already spent a week on the East Coast, three of those hours in their pocket before they ever boarded. The second is that the flight was seven hours long. A body clock moves roughly one to two hours a day toward a new time zone, and five hours is a two- or three-day adjustment. A team that stays on home time for a weekend can simply outlast the problem and fly home before it becomes one.
So the London plan may have worked. It also may have been irrelevant. Either way, it was a plan for a five-hour problem.
Australia Was Not a Five-Hour Problem
When the NFL scheduled the Rams and the 49ers to open the 2026 season in Melbourne, the Rams ran the London play again. They landed Thursday morning, about 28 hours before Friday's 10:37 a.m. kickoff, kept the roster on Los Angeles time, and spent nearly as many hours on the airplane as they would spend on Australian ground.
The 49ers did the opposite. They arrived on September 4, a full week early, and spent the week going to Australian rules football games, doing local media, and letting daylight do its work.
The Rams were 3.5-point favorites. They lost 27 to 7, and it was not close. San Francisco scored 17 unanswered points after halftime, and Fred Warner, who watched the Rams' offense from a few yards away for the entire second half, said afterward that "it felt like they kind of withered away." Mike Evans, who caught a touchdown, learned from reporters only after the game when the Rams had landed. "Oh, dang!" he said. "I mean, you got to give your body time to adjust."
Two things had changed since the London game. Neither of them was the plan.
The first was arithmetic. Melbourne is 17 hours ahead of Los Angeles, not five. The flight is more than 15 hours, not seven. And the Rams boarded from California, with none of the head start they had carried into London. Everything about the London trip that made it survivable had been removed, and the strategy was applied anyway. The Rams did not make a football mistake. They made a math mistake, and math is undefeated.
The second was the opponent. Jacksonville had acclimated and lost. San Francisco acclimated and won. That difference is not an accident. The 49ers are a very good football team, and a week of living in Melbourne time did not make them one; it just let them show up as themselves. The Rams' plan required them to be so much better than the 49ers that it would not matter if they were playing on a body clock that read three in the morning. They were not that much better. Very few teams are that much better than anyone.
That is the actual lesson. The London win did not prove the Rams had beaten jet lag. It proved that against a weaker opponent, across a small time change, with a head start, you can get away with ignoring it. Melbourne was a test of what happens when none of those conditions hold, and the answer was 27 to 7.
How to Not Do This on Your Next Trip
You are probably not flying to Australia to play the 49ers. But you may be flying to London to close a deal, to Tokyo for a conference, or to visit family on another continent, and the thing you want on arrival is the same thing the Rams wanted: to show up as yourself. Your athletic self, your professional self, or simply the version of you that does not snap at a relative on day three. Here is what the evidence says about how to do that.
Be honest about the size of the problem. Five hours and a short flight is a weekend. You can wing it, stay near home time, and fly home before your body notices. Eight hours or more, with a long flight, is a different sport. Count the zones before you count on anything else.
Start before you leave. For three or four nights before a big eastward or westward jump, move your bedtime 30 to 60 minutes toward the destination time each night. It is free, it works, and almost nobody does it. The NFL's chief medical officer told ABC that the league's teams began their Melbourne sleep plans two weeks before the game. You do not need two weeks. Three nights of going to bed early like a child will do most of the work.
Stop counting the flight as sleep. This is the Rams' real error, and a sleep specialist at NYU Langone named it exactly: "You're not getting the same restoration compared to the quiet of your own bedroom. You're up in the air. The airplane moves. You go in and out." Sleep on the plane if the hours line up with nighttime at your destination. Otherwise, assume you are getting nothing and plan for the night after you land.
Skip the drinks on board. A pooled analysis of 27 studies found that alcohol both delays REM sleep and cuts it short, starting at about two standard drinks. A long-haul cabin with a beverage cart is the easiest place in modern life to make that mistake, and then make it again.
If you use melatonin, use it correctly, because most people do not. A Cochrane review of ten randomized trials found it reduces jet lag on trips crossing five or more time zones, and the rules are specific. Half a milligram to five milligrams; above five buys you nothing. Immediate release, not slow release. And take it between 10 p.m. and midnight, local time, at your destination. Do not take it on the plane, on landing, or because you feel tired. The reviewers were explicit that melatonin taken at the wrong hour makes you drowsy and delays adjustment. Taken carelessly, it makes jet lag worse. It also works better going east than west. Melatonin moves your clock; it does not improve the quality of your sleep once you are down. That is a separate job.
Get outside when you land. Daylight is the strongest signal your body clock receives. Both teams in Melbourne used sleep masks, blue-light glasses, and timed sun exposure, and they did it because it works.
Then give it days. One to two hours a day is the speed limit, and no seat, supplement, or attitude changes it. If the trip is short and the time change is big, you will not fully adjust, and the right plan is to protect the one or two things that matter most and let the rest go.
One note on safety. The Cochrane reviewers found melatonin side effects uncommon with occasional use, but they flagged case reports of harm in people with epilepsy and in patients on warfarin. If either applies, or if you take prescription medication, are pregnant, or have a diagnosed sleep disorder, ask your doctor first.
The Rams had a charter jet, lie-flat seats, and a sports science staff, and they still got the arithmetic wrong. You have a coach seat and a neck pillow. Count the hours, go to bed early for three nights, skip the wine, and take the melatonin at the right time. That is the whole game.
Paul Muchowski, Ph.D., is a neuroscientist and a former professor at the University of California, San Francisco.