Jarrett Bell has been covering the NFL for USA TODAY since 1993 and is a recipient of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Bill Nunn Memorial Award for career achievement. He's been a member of Hall of Fame selection committee since 1997 and has voted on AP awards and Super Bowl MVP panels for more than 25 years. Each Monday during the 2026 season, he'll take you around the league as only he can.
How’s this for the game-within-a-game:
The San Francisco 49ers left for Melbourne, Australia, last Wednesday for their grand season opener, allowing roughly a week to adjust their body clocks and acclimate to the environment in the Land Down Under.
The Los Angeles Rams are still in California, set to take off Tuesday night for a 17-hour flight, arriving about
24 before kickoff.
Which strategy wins?
“We felt like staying in our rhythm and routine and then traveling when we do,” Rams coach Sean McVay told reporters over the weekend. “The thinking in its simplest form is, what do we deem the best for our football players and for them to try to be at their best? There are different approaches and theories. But I do have a lot of trust in our group and we’ll see.”
The Rams have a three-game winning streak abroad under McVay. But this is new territory. The previous three international tilts were in London. Last year, the Rams stayed in Baltimore after a game against the Ravens, then flew to the UK the day before they clobbered the Jaguars, 35-7. So, in a universe where NFL coaches swear by routines, the day-before arrival suits the mission.
It’s just that this time, the NFL is staging its furthest game yet from the U.S. Somehow, that seems fitting in a year when the Artemis II crew set the record for the longest human spaceflight by traveling more than 250,000 miles in its furthest distance from Earth.
In any event, the added layer of uncertainty creates an intriguing subplot for a game that kicks off at 10:35 a.m. local time on Friday – 8:35 p.m. ET on Thursday night.
“Obviously, that’s the club’s choice on when and how they go into the market,” executive vice president Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s international point man, told reporters last week.
This has increasingly become the new normal for NFL teams. The league is staginga record nine international games this season – across four continents, seven countries and eight stadiums – and almost assuredly will hit the maximum of 10 allowed in the collective bargaining agreement.
Eventually, with owners voting in 2022 for each team to give up one home game every four years, Commissioner Roger Goodell maintains that the NFL wants 16 international games per year – which would make for a nice TV or streaming package to bundle and sell. Or multiple packages.
Just hold off on some of the visions that pop up about the NFL basing a team abroad, or establishing a European division, or taking the Super Bowl internationally.
“The NFL’s very proud of how fast they sell out these games, but it’s a diversion,” Andrew Brandt, a former Green Bay Packers executive and current sports law professor at Villanova, told USA TODAY Sports. “It’s like Premier soccer games in our country.”
Brandt certainly has a unique perspective on this. During the early 1990s, he spent a year as the GM of the Barcelona Dragons when the NFL created a spring league, the World League of American Football (WLAF). He details that experience – selling football abroad – in a fascinating book, "Smarter About Sports" (Triumph Books), about his wide-ranging journey in the sports industry.
Of course, the NFL has come a long way since those failed developmental spring leagues and series of preseason games. The difference came with a philosophical shift that, despite challenges added for preparation, is in full force now.
“I think we all learned some lessons,” Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II told USA TODAY Sports. “Roger, in particular, looked at it and said, ‘What we’ve been putting out is not our best product.’
“We were doing World League games with guys that were barely making teams, right? Doing preseason games in other countries. Not that they were a complete waste of time. But we weren’t making great progress doing that and so now we’re starting to make progress. We still have a long way to go, but we’re starting to see there’s a path forward here. I think Roger’s mindset is if we’re doing this, we’ve got to put our best product out there and showcase to people in other countries, here’s what our game really looks like.”
The Rams vs. 49ers showcase an intense NFC West rivalry, much like the A-West tilt featuring the Chiefs and Chargers in Sao Paulo, Brazil, last year. In Week 3, the Cowboys and Ravens will each take 10-hour flights and play the NFL’s first game in Rio de Janeiro.
Paris. Madrid. Mexico City. Munich. The NFL global game is just getting started.
Meanwhile, McVay is bracing himself for the feedback – for better or worse.
“I understand the narratives and hey, when we do good, it’s nice things,” he said. “And when we do bad, you’re criticizing me…I’m comfortable with that. That’s the world we live in.”
In more ways than one.
What it is, what it should be
Patrick Mahomes or Aaron Donald? For months, the Chiefs quarterback has ranked as the favorite for Comeback Player of the Year honors. Sure, other key players are returning from injuries, including Kyler Murray, Fred Warner, George Kittle and Malik Nabers. But it’s Mahomes, 30, the NFL’s best quarterback (Josh Allen included), who tore the ACL and LCL in his left knee in mid-December and is on track to return at Arrowhead Stadium on Monday night in an A-West showdown against the Broncos who has been the favorite.
Then the three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year decided to come back for the Rams after 2 ½ years of retirement. A potential dilemma for voters of the NFL’s annual awards?
Maybe not. Technically, according to the definition provided by The Associated Press to the 50-member media panel that selects the All-Pro teams and individual awards, the comeback honor is for “a player who has demonstrated resilience in the face of adversity by overcoming illness, injury or other challenging circumstances that caused them to miss playing time in the past year.” That seemingly disqualifies Donald, 35, for this honor.
Not so fast. In the memo that Josh Hoffner, the AP’s new sports editor, sent to voters last week – and I’ve been privileged to be part of the panel for more than 25 years – a vote for Donald when the ballots are collected at the end of the regular season would still count.
Hoffner wrote: “For Comeback Player of the Year, we realize that comebacks take many different forms, and this is often a complicated choice. Previous winners have re-emerged from significant injury, health scares, ineffectiveness and other challenges. Voters have the freedom to choose the player and comeback they feel best fits the spirit of the award.”
We’ll see how this plays out. But having a gray area can make for a slippery slope.
Two-minute drill
- Congrats, Roger Goodell. Five days after marking his 20-year anniversary as NFL Commissioner, the league on Sunday announced that Goodell agreed to a 4-year extension running through the 2030 season. That keeps him in place to drive the bus for the key business of striking the next collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association and another series of media rights deals to solidify – or well, expand – the league’s financial footing well into the next decade. Goodell’s previous deal was reportedly worth at least $64 million per year – which, get this, was more than double the combined annual pay of commissioners for MLB, the NBA, NHL and MLS. The new contract, as Patriots owner and NFL compensation committee chair Robert Kraft stated in a memo to team owners obtained by USA TODAY Sports, is “heavily performance-based with 95% of the compensation” tied to league revenues. With the NFL positioned to hit the goal of $25 billion in annual revenue by 2027 that Goodell established in 2010 (when they brought in roughly $8 billion), the bottom line of the new contract: more very fat paychecks.
- Congrats, Marshall Faulk. Two days after his Hall of Fame classmate (and former Colorado boss), Deion Sanders, sealed a riveting comeback victory at Georgia Tech with a blocked field as time expired, Faulk seized his first win as Southern University coach with a 34-15 smashing of Kentucky State. Yes, there was something else happening in Baton Rouge on Saturday night. Fittingly, Faulk’s lead running back, Trey Holly, had a huge impact on the effort by rushing for 99 yards and 2 TDs.
- The stalemate in contract talks for two premier cornerbacks – New England’s Christian Gonzalez and Pittsburgh’s Joey Porter Jr. – looms as a key subplot for Week 1. Interestingly, Gonzalez has the same agent, Reginald Johnson, who negotiated the 4-year, $132 million deal that made Seahawks star Devon Witherspoon the NFL’s highest-paid cornerback with an average salary of $33 million. Porter, meanwhile, is up against the clock that is the Steelers’ policy to not negotiate after the regular season begins. It’s fair to wonder whether GM Omar Khan will break from policy in this case, which would set quite a precedent.
- It won’t be the same Odell Beckham Jr. in the familiar No. 13 jersey for the Giants. But the 11th-year veteran who completed his comeback by making the team's 53-man roster can still dazzle with one-handed catches and still figures to be a matchup problem while likely lining up in the slot. “They said I was the fastest player on the field in that last preseason game,” he said. “So, I think I’m still running a little bit.”
What I learned, touring NFL training camps
Steve Spagnuolo has been here before. The Chiefs overhauled their secondary after the departure of three starters. Nothing screams urgency quite like using each of your team's first four draft picks – including cornerback Mansoor Delane, picked sixth overall – on defensive prospects. It’s reminiscent of Spagnuolo’s task as D-coordinator in 2022, and before that in 2019. Experience tells him it takes a village to get everybody up to speed.
“Listen, our coaching staff does a great job: we feed ’em, push ’em, give ’em all the info. But it helps when you can go up to another player who’s been in the system for four years and say, ‘What is he really looking for?'" Spagnuolo told USA TODAY Sports.
He mentioned the presence of linebackers Nick Bolton and Dru Tranquill as big resources and thinks cornerback L’Jarius Sneed’s experience in the system is a huge bonus attached to his return to Kansas City.
Keep an eye on second-round edge rusher R. Mason Thomas, who joins first-round defensive tackle Peter Woods in the mix. Yet also heed the wisdom of Spagnuolo in considering it more challenging to break in on the back end.
“You can cover up for mistakes on the front end with a good linebacker or a really good cover corner,” he said. “Make a mistake on the back end … you can lose a game that way.”
Best documentary I watched during the offseason
"The PVIL Story: Separate…But Equal?" It’s the story of the Prairie View Interscholastic League (PVIL) during 50-plus years of desegregation in Texas, focusing primarily on the legacy of high school football before integration began in 1967. The history lesson, directed by Mark Burns, includes Johnny Roland (who became Walter Payton’s position coach during his long run as an assistant coach in the NFL) leading Corpus Christi Miller High as the first integrated state champion. And a team that along the way defeated a Port Arthur Thomas Jefferson that included Hall of Fame coach Jimmy Johnson. The film also highlights one of Warren Moon’s inspirations, Eldridge Dickey, who became the first Black quarterback selected in the first round in the NFL, by the Oakland Raiders…yet never threw a pass in the NFL because he was switched to wide receiver.
John McClain, the former longtime NFL writer for The Houston Chronicle and one of the film’s producers, said that seven Pro Football Hall of Famers had roots in the PVIL. This includes “Mean Joe” Greene, the Pittsburgh Steelers legend who began at Temple Dunbar High School.
“There was so much that I wasn’t aware of," Greene told USA TODAY Sports. "That’s why the documentary is important. The PVIL made it possible for me to get a scholarship to North Texas State. Without it, I don’t know where I would’ve been.”
Closing Bell
With Kirk Cousins getting the nod (finally, yet as expected) as the Week 1 starter for the Raiders, Fernando Mendoza is slated to become the first quarterback drafted No. 1 overall to not open the season as the starter since Baker Mayfield in 2018. Mayfield came off the bench for the Browns in Week 3, replacing an injured Tyrod Taylor, then started the next 13 games. Before that, Jared Goff sat for the first nine games after the Rams drafted him No. 1 overall in 2016. Goff started the final seven games that year.
“I thought it was great for me, to not put me out there right away,” Goff told USA TODAY Sports. “Learning from a veteran guy, Case Keenum, I soaked up as much information as I could. It didn’t help much because I went 0-7 my first year. But while it was a good, valuable learning experience, ultimately, playing the game is the best experience you’re going to get.”
Asked about Mendoza in this spot, Goff replied: “Ten years ago, I did it. I thought it was valuable. What they decide to do is whatever.”
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rams vs 49ers chess match starting early – in the air: Monday Morning JB
