Do the NFL’s International Schedule ‘Pros’ Outweigh the Physical ‘Cons’?

Kyle Shanahan isn’t known for hiding his emotions behind “coach speech”, and when it comes to the NFL’s decision to send the San Francisco 49ers to Melbourne, Australia, to open the 2026 season, he is annoyed and concerned. Speaking at the annual league meetings Monday morning, Shanahan was asked if he saw any competitive "pros" to the 19 hour flight across the Pacific to face the Los Angeles Rams, who are generally a 344 mile trip down south in the same state. His response was a blunt reality check for a league increasingly focused on global branding over local logistics.

"I don't see any pro," Shanahan said. "It's cool for the league to play globally. I think that's awesome.

But as far as the team doing it, no, there's not much benefit to it. " The Logistics of Exhaustion While the NFL celebrates the "historic" nature of the first regular season game in the Southern Hemisphere, the 49ers are left calculating the physiological toll. The flight from California to Melbourne covers nearly 8,000 miles.

For world class athletes whose bodies are fine tuned machines and usually larger than the average human being, a 20 hour stint in a pressurized cabin with limited space is the opposite of "peak preparation. " Travel doesn’t just cause a bit of jet lag, traveling by plane, as we know, induces a state of systemic inflammation. Long haul travel is known to disrupt circadian rhythms, which regulates everything from muscle recovery to reaction times.