Rams head coach Sean McVay said on Monday that the team has not decided whether defensive tackle Aaron Donald will play in Week 2, but the opposing head coach believes he knows the answer.
The Giants will be in Los Angeles for a Monday night game and head coach John Harbaugh said that the team believes Donald will be making his first appearance since coming out of retirement.
“We are expecting him to play,” Harbaugh said, via Ryan Dunleavy of the New York Post. “We are expecting him to be Aaron Donald. He’s a game-wrecker.”
49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan had the same expectation heading into last Thursday’s game, but Donald did not travel to Australia with the Rams for the opener. Shanahan did have to contend with Myles Garrett, who was ineffective while trying to play through a knee injury that landed him on injured reserve this week.
We’ll likely find out closer to kickoff if Harbaugh and the Giants are going to have to deal with either one.
Rams Clips
The 49ers’ Week 1 win over the Rams resulted in a shift in betting odds, but perhaps not as big a shift as some would think.
The Rams remain the favorites to win the Super Bowl, as they were before the season. The Rams’ Super Bowl odds dropped to +650 from their preseason odds of +500, but they’re still the favorites to win it all.
The 49ers, however, are now the favorites to win the NFC West. The 49ers’ odds are +160 to win the division, followed by the Seahawks at +175 and Rams at +205. The Cardinals are extreme long shots at +4500.
The 49ers’ odds to win the Super Bowl are +1400, tied with the Chiefs for the fifth-best chance of winning the title.
Why would the Rams be first in Super Bowl odds but third in division odds? It’s ultimately about how good the oddsmakers think the Rams will be by the time the postseason rolls around. Right now, with Myles Garrett on injured reserve and Aaron Donald yet to play, it’s easy to see the Rams starting slow and falling behind in the division. But if they make the playoffs at all, the Rams should be a tough team to beat.
The Rams may have to go on the road in the playoffs, but no one should dismiss their chances of winning it all.
With the usual Thursday night opener moving to Wednesday night, the recent Friday night international game moved to Thursday. And the game between the 49ers and Rams from Australia did solid but not spectacular numbers.
Via Eric Fisher of Front Office Sports, the Netflix stream attracted 18.5 million domestic viewers and 3.2 million international viewers.
The U.S. number matched the YouTube audience from last year’s Chiefs-Chargers game in Brazil. The foreign audience was larger this year.
Given that Netflix is a paid service and the YouTube game streamed for free, that’s good news — even though the YouTube numbers were widely regarded as disappointing.
Last December, a pair of NFL games on Christmas generated 23.7 million U.S. viewers, on average.
On one hand, the Netflix number exceeded by more than three million viewers the 2025 Thursday night average viewership on Amazon. On the other hand, the excitement of Week 1 tends to generate bigger numbers.
It didn’t help that the game wasn’t very good. The 49ers slowly suffocated the Rams in a 27-7 game that was competitive in the first half but not in the second.
Netflix will stream four more games this season. The next one comes in November, on the night before Thanksgiving. Then, Netflix will have two Christmas games for the third straight year. The slate ends on the Saturday of Week 18.
The new age of college football has made one of its time-honored traditions even more glaring — the early-season tuneup games.
First-year Southern coach Marshall Faulk witnessed it on Saturday, when No. 22-ranked Houston shredded his Jaguars, 77-6.
“That wasn’t really a game, that was kind of a preseason crash-dummy test for Houston to work on all the good plays,” Faulk told reporters, via Brad Crawford of CBS Sports.
Southern was paid $450,000 to serve as the cannon fodder for the Cougars.
For decades, high-level programs have scheduled lower-level schools in the early weeks of the season. What used to be games between Division I-A and Division I-AA have become FBS vs. FCS slaughterhouses.
“Let’s just be real, OK?” Faulk said. “They’re better than us. We’re FCS, everybody knows what this is, let it be what it is.”
The transfer portal has made matters worse, because the best young players at FCS schools typically end up getting big bucks with FBS programs.
“I was literally standing on the sideline thinking to myself, back when let’s say Southern had juniors and seniors . . . this could be a competitive game playing a team like Houston,” Faulk said. “In today’s landscape, we don’t have the budget to compete against them. We just don’t.”
Saturday’s game included an eight-minute fourth quarter, after Houston built a 70-0 lead through the first 45 minutes.
“The reality is our kids were giving their best effort, but we’re not good enough to beat a team that doesn’t beat themselves,” Faulk said. “There’s not anything we could’ve done. I’ve been around a lot of football, man. We don’t have the bodies, we don’t have the funds, we don’t have the equipment . . . all the stuff needed to compete with a team like that. . . . Guts and glory and want and will is not enough to compete with a team like that.”
Again, it’s been that way for a long time. Recent trends have made it worse. The question becomes whether the powers-that-be will change the rules to prevent games like this from happening.
The problem is that, even if the players have no business going against elite programs, their schools won’t want to give up the revenue that comes from serving as a sacrificial lamb.
After electing to come out of retirement, Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald did not travel to Australia for the team’s eventual Week 1 loss to the 49ers.
But will he play in the Week 2 matchup against the Giants?
Head coach Sean McVay said on Monday that’s still to be determined.
“We haven’t decided that yet,” McVay said in his video conference, via Sarah Barshop of ESPN. “He’s going to continue to work his process and we’ll see what that looks like.”
Los Angeles’ defense could use a boost from Donald, especially considering that the unit won’t have edge rusher Myles Garrett for at least the next four weeks as he undergoes knee surgery. The 49ers finished with 379 yards, 23 first downs, and 7-of-12 on third down against the Rams last week.
Before Sunday’s games kicked off, there was big news involving a team that had opened its season earlier in the week.
Rams defensive end Myles Garrett needs knee surgery and will miss at least four games because he’ll be placed on injured reserve while he recovers. The news came after Garrett made no impact in last Thursday’s loss to the 49ers and cited his health — his practice time was limited all summer because of the knee — as a reason for his ineffectiveness.
On Monday, Rams head coach Sean McVay said, via multiple reporters, that the team thought the injury was ""something that he would be able to work through.”
“Thought we would take an approach where he’d be feeling good enough to go contribute positive change and be the player that he’s capable of,” McVay said, via Sarah Barshop of ESPN.com. “That wasn’t the case. And so the next right thing for us is to be able to get this thing fixed.”
McVay said the team will not have a firm idea about Garrett’s timeline to return to action until after the surgery. They know that it will be at least four games, however, and they know that their margin for error got a lot slimmer with or without him thanks to their dud in the opener.
The dream team has had an unexpected detour.
After losing to the 49ers badly in Melbourne, and given Myles Garrett’s candid remarks about the impact of his health on his performance, Garrett will have knee surgery and be placed on injured reserve, per multiple reports.
It’s a stunning development for a Rams team that became the odds-on favorites to win the Super Bowl after Garrett’s arrival in June. His presence lured Aaron Donald out of retirement. Now, Donald will be playing for at least four games (if Donald plays in Week 2) without Garrett.
And it won’t be an easy road. The Rams host the Giants next Monday night. The following Sunday night, they face the Broncos in Denver. Then, the Rams head to Philly for a date with the Eagles. After that, the Rams return home for a Monday night showdown with Josh Allen and the Bills.
As the conversation continues on the Rams’ apparent misfire regarding the decision to barnstorm into and out of Melbourne, there’s another question that needs to be asked about Week 1 international games played a long way away from the U.S.
Michael Holley mentioned the concept on Friday’s PFT Live. And it’s a good idea — the league should treat the Week 1 international game like the Super Bowl and require the teams to arrive early.
If the goal is to export the game to the countries, the effort needs to be more comprehensive. Get there early. Make local appearances. Have multiple press conferences in the place where the game will be played.
It takes the travel strategy out of the teams’ hands and makes the issue part of the overall obligation.
Yes, the rest of the story regarding the 49ers-Rams travel adventure will unfold in Week 2, and possibly beyond. But the 49ers seemed to be far more prepared to play given their decision to go to Australia a week early. Having both teams arrive on the same day avoids the possibility that one team will be acclimated and one won’t.
Of course, the Rams’ experience may be enough to get the selected teams to go early without being told to do so. But why even let it be a variable? The NFL is already imposing on the teams by making them play on the other side of the world. It’s not much more of an imposition to mandate the itinerary.
49ers quarterback Brock Purdy’s 39-yard piss missile to receiver Demarcus Robinson in the first half of Thursday night’s game in Australia became the first clear indication that San Francisco could indeed topple the 2026 edition of the Dream Team.
San Francisco’s 27-7 victory over the favorites to win Super Bowl LXI has prompted a shift in the Super Bowl betting profiles of both teams.
The Rams remain the favorites, with their odds slightly sinking from +500 to +600. The 49ers have experienced an uptick. Their pregame odds of +1900 have moved to +1400.
The odds mean little. They only reflect the perception of those who are inclined to put skin in the game.
It’s still interesting to see how the perceptions have become revised in the aftermath of one game. For the Rams, it’s regarded as an aberration. For the 49ers, it’s an indication that the overlooked team in the NFC West will have something to say about the ultimate outcome of the season, and perhaps then some.
It’s one thing for Rams defensive end Myles Garrett to make no impact in his first game with his second team. It’s quite another to hear Garrett explain the reasons for his struggles.
“When I was out there I was a little more focused on myself and trying to stay healthy than what they were doing, and it showed,” Garrett said.
That’s alarming. And unusual. Typically, players don’t play if concerns about their health become a distraction to the task at hand. It’s fair to wonder why Garrett played — and why the Rams didn’t intervene and stop him from playing.
It’s also fair to wonder whether the Rams knew about Garrett’s circumstances. If they had, the Rams may not have used him for six special-teams snaps, hopeful he’d show off his ability to block a kick, or two.
The urgency to play was surely very, very strong for Garrett. It was the biggest move of the offseason. Garrett, who had wanted to be traded by the Browns for years, finally got his wish. The transaction made the Rams the presumptive Super Bowl favorites. It got Aaron Donald to come out of retirement.
And then, in Week 1, Garrett had the same impact on the game that Donald did, even though Donald didn’t even make the trip.
A player should be at his healthiest in Week 1. For Garrett, he’ll need to get to 100 percent with a fresh train on the tracks, each and every week. With the bye not coming until Week 11, Garrett has nine more games to go until he gets extra time to recover.
Fans and media spend most of the offseason pondering the hypothetical regarding the season to come. Once the games begin, the practical takes over. Through one game, the practical impact of Garrett was far below what it could have and should have been.
The clock is now ticking toward Week 2, vs. the Giants. And Week 3, at the Broncos. And Week 4, at the Eagles. And Week 5, vs. the Bills.
Will Garrett, now 30, have a chance to get his body to where he wants to be? If not, how loud will the questions become about whether the Rams may have been better off if they’d kept Jared Verse?
The volume will also depend on Verse’s performances for the Browns, starting in two days at Jacksonville.
