Eight Of San Francisco's Nine Defensive Linemen Landed In Melbourne
Sam Okuayinonu is the one who stayed home. The club announced it shortly before the flight left, gave a foot as the reason, and listed him questionable for September 10 rather than ruling him out. Three of the eight who did fly had not practised on Wednesday.
San Francisco carries nine defensive linemen on its active roster. Eight of them landed in Melbourne.
Sam Okuayinonu is the ninth. The club announced shortly before the flight left on Wednesday night that he would not be making the trip, gave a foot injury as the reason, and then declined to rule him out of the September 10 opener, listing him questionable instead. Michael David Smith, at Pro Football Talk, reported all of it Thursday morning and wrote that Okuayinonu may fly to Australia separately if the foot responds to treatment in the next few days. Kyle Posey, at Niners Nation, has Matt Maiocco reporting that everybody else on the roster travelled.
Questionable is a designation that assumes a second flight.
Who the club left behind#
Okuayinonu played fifteen games last season and started twelve of them, with thirty-nine combined tackles and three sacks, per the club's own player page. Twelve is most of a career. He has fifteen starts in all, every one of them for San Francisco, and his six games in Tennessee in 2022 produced none.
Raheem Morris spent Tuesday's availability in Santa Clara talking about him. "He's a barnyard bully," the defensive coordinator said, in a passage published by Jose Sanchez at Sports Illustrated. "He can do whatever you want him to do. He's kind of got that role where he can be that spinner we talked about. He can play at the line of scrimmage, plays with great strength, is able to go out there and shed blocks, be able to cause havoc."
Morris was asked about the group as a whole at the same availability, in an answer NBC Sports Bay Area published the next morning. "I feel pretty deep there," he said.
The eight who flew#
Three of them had not practised the day before.
Wednesday's non-participant list, from Posey's account of the final Santa Clara session, ran six names: Renardo Green with a hamstring, Jacob Cowing with a groin, Luke Gifford with a hamstring, Gracen Halton with an ankle, Romello Height with an ankle, and James Thompson Jr. with nothing specified. Halton, Height and Thompson are defensive linemen. That is half the list.
A fourth defensive lineman on the plane, Bosa, practised Wednesday for the first time since August 3, and it was his first session with team periods in it since he tore the right anterior cruciate ligament in Week 3 of last season.
Which leaves Alfred Collins, Osa Odighizuwa, C.J. West and Keion White as the men who neither missed Wednesday nor are working their way back from something this week. Mykel Williams, the other name a reader might expect, sits on the club's Active/Physically Unable to Perform table and is not among the nine at all.
Posey's reading of the consequence is that Ogbo Okoronkwo's elevation from the practice squad becomes automatic if Okuayinonu cannot play, that White has to rush predominantly from the edge rather than kicking inside, and that Collins and West pick up passing-down work they were not built for. He also raises the possibility that Morris reaches for five-man fronts with the rookie Jaden Dugger walked down on the line of scrimmage earlier than anyone planned.
What the club did about the position before it left#
It signed two defensive linemen to its practice squad on September 1, Kevin Givens and Vincent Anthony Jr., in a four-man release that also added a cornerback and an offensive lineman. That release is still the newest entry on the club's transaction page, which carries nothing for September 2 or September 3.
On September 2 the club hosted a defensive tackle on a visit. McKinnley Jackson is a Texas A&M product Cincinnati took in the third round in 2024 and waived at the August 30 cutdown, listed at six feet two and 325 pounds. David Bonilla, reading the league's transaction report at 49ers Webzone, has the visit. Nobody signed.
On Thursday the same report carried an injury settlement with Victor Dimukeje, which removes him from injured reserve and out of the building. He had signed on August 17 and gone on the list ten days later. The settlement is on the league report alone: neither the club's own transaction page nor ESPN's San Francisco transaction file has it.
The week in front of them#
The Qantas A380 touched down at Melbourne Airport at 7:50 a.m. local time on Friday, after a flight of just over fifteen hours covering 7,855 miles, per Bonilla. Melbourne runs seventeen hours ahead of Pacific daylight time and does not move its clocks until October, so Friday morning there was Thursday afternoon here.
San Francisco holds a light practice in Melbourne on Saturday morning local time, takes Sunday off, and starts its normal game-week schedule on Monday. The Rams do not leave until next week and arrive the day before kickoff. San Francisco is the designated home team at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which is why its own schedule page reads Rams rather than at Rams.
Okuayinonu has a week and a fifteen-hour flight between him and kickoff.
