The Super Bowl of Jet Lag

The San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams are set to play the NFL's first-ever regular-season game in Melbourne, Australia. The two teams normally face each other with a short drive between cities, but this time they crossed more than 8,000 miles of ocean to get there. Before a single snap is taken, both teams have already faced a major challenge: jet lag. How each team handled the long journey could decide who wins on the field.

The two teams made very different choices about when to fly to Australia. The 49ers arrived nine days early, giving their players time to adjust to Melbourne's time zone. They spent that time training, watching local Australian rules football, and winning over fans in the city. The Rams, on the other hand, landed just one day before the game, betting that their players' bodies wouldn't notice the time difference if they were only there for a short time.

Jet lag happens when you travel quickly across many time zones and your body's internal clock gets confused. Your body expects to be awake during the day and asleep at night, but after a long flight, those signals get mixed up. You might feel wide awake at midnight or exhausted at noon. For professional football players, that kind of confusion can hurt their speed, strength, and decision-making during a game.

Jet lag also affects the body in less obvious ways. The body produces compounds that fight infection mostly at night. When a player's sleep schedule is thrown off, that system doesn't work as well. Players can suffer from stomachaches, headaches, poor focus, and mood swings — none of which helps on game day.

Research backs up the idea that jet lag matters in pro sports. One study looked at every NFL game from 1970 to 2011 where kickoff was after 8 p.m. Eastern time. West Coast teams performed better than experts expected in two out of every three of those games, no matter where they were playing. That suggests that when teams are more in tune with evening hours, they play better at night.

Sleep scientists say that fully recovering from jet lag takes one day for every time zone crossed. Melbourne is 17 hours ahead of California, but in terms of the body clock, that is the same as being seven hours behind. The 49ers' head coach, Kyle Shanahan, said he would have liked to just arrive the day before the game. But every expert he talked to told him to come early — "I was a little bit on the fence," he said. "Science wasn't."

The Rams tried a different approach. For several weeks before the trip, they practiced in the late afternoon — the same time of day as the morning kickoff in Melbourne. Their coach, Sean McVay, said the team would "have kind of a rhythm" when they landed. He pointed to past success with this method, noting that the Rams arrived in London just one day before a game last year and still won.

However, sleep experts are not convinced the Rams made the right call. Jamie Zeitzer, a sleep scientist at Stanford University, called the Rams' plan "high risk, high reward." He explained that while late afternoon is when the body is at peak performance — with strong muscles, sharp focus, and a higher body temperature — a week may not even be long enough for the 49ers to fully recover. Some people simply take longer to adjust, and hotel life, unfamiliar food, and a long flight can all make sleep even harder.

Dr. Meeta Singh, a sleep doctor who has worked with several NFL teams, thinks Rams players simply won't be able to sleep well during their short time in Australia. She co-wrote guidelines published in a medical journal recommending that athletes follow a lighter workout schedule and do hand-eye coordination drills for at least 72 hours after a long flight. The Rams won't even be in Australia for 72 hours total, making those guidelines nearly impossible to follow.

Sleep has become a big deal in professional sports in recent years. After the NBA gave more than 2,000 smart rings to players during the pandemic to track their sleep, coaches started taking rest much more seriously. Today, many NFL teams have sleep specialists working to help players handle long-distance travel, and 14 teams — including the 49ers — have installed special lighting systems that mimic daylight to help reset players' body clocks.

The NFL plans to keep growing its international schedule, with Commissioner Roger Goodell eventually wanting 16 international games per season. Upcoming seasons could see games in Japan or the United Arab Emirates, and Goodell believes an NFL team will be based outside the United States within his lifetime. With that future in mind, figuring out how to beat jet lag is becoming just as important as any other part of game preparation. But as one sports scientist put it, usually "the better team will win even if they're playing on the moon" — and right now, the Rams are the Super Bowl favorites.