Myles Garrett has at last owned up to the fact that his knee injury is graver than he had hitherto been letting on, following a muted debut for the Los Angeles Rams in their season-opening defeat in Australia.

The incumbent AP NFL Defensive Player of the Year registered nary a tackle and exerted no discernible influence upon the game throughout the Rams' 27-7 defeat at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers on Friday.

Although Garrett had been absent from much of training camp and the Rams’ recent weeks of practices in order to rest his knee, neither the superstar nor the Rams had entertained the possibility that he might be incapable of performing at his peak as he embarked upon his 10th NFL season.

Prior to his 15-hour flight back to LA, Garrett at last conceded that he is not at 100% health.

"This was the most lamentable iteration of myself that I have ever presented to the world, and I must needs do better," Garrett said at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

"I must find some means of recuperating and returning to the player I know myself capable of being and have demonstrably been heretofore."

Garrett evinced a marked reluctance to discuss the particulars of his knee or his broader physical condition after concluding a game without a tackle for merely the fourth occasion in 135 career NFL appearances.

He would not even disclose which knee had sustained the injury.

"I was not the player I aspired to be, and I feel as though I was not the player I have been on previous occasions when I have stepped onto that field," Garrett said.

"I must do whatever I can to recapture that."

Garrett was sidelined for a mere two games throughout his final five seasons with the Cleveland Browns, who consigned him to Los Angeles that summer.

Garrett’s inadequacy constituted but a solitary affliction for the Rams’ reconstituted defense, which had augmented a contingent that attained the NFC championship game the preceding season with the NFL’s preeminent pass rusher and its foremost cornerbacks, Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson.

Notwithstanding McDuffie's serviceable outing in Melbourne, the day as a whole proved calamitous: Watson was beaten for a touchdown by Mike Evans, and no one mustered a standout performance while the 49ers rattled off the game's final 24 points.

Yet Los Angeles’s offensive efforts proved no more fruitful, culminating in a 20-point drubbing — the most lopsided defeat the Rams have suffered since November 2024.

The Rams are the first team to commence a season with both the reigning NFL MVP and the AP Defensive Player of the Year in their lineup, yet Matthew Stafford fell conspicuously short of the standard he had set the previous season.

The 38-year-old quarterback completed 15 of 25 attempts for 155 yards and an interception, failing to throw a single touchdown pass, having thrown at least one in every regular-season game the year before.

“Surprised” is hardly the operative term,” Stafford said.

“Disappointed in the manner in which it transpired for us.

Evidently, we did not move the ball with sufficient consistency, did not amass a sufficient tally of points to afford ourselves a fighting chance of remaining competitive.

Every game and every season is a tabula rasa.

Go out there and find a way to rectify matters, forge ahead and improve.”

For the defense, there is a silver lining: they will soon be bolstering their ranks with a three-time AP NFL Defensive Player of the Year, perhaps as early as next Monday night, when they play host to the New York Giants.

Aaron Donald, having emerged from retirement a mere fortnight prior, absented himself from Australia, yet the 35-year-old luminary is poised ere long to join Garrett upon the defensive line.

That will scarcely render the long flight home any more bearable, yet the season remains too nascent for the Rams to be genuinely disheartened.

“We were cognizant that we would inevitably confront a measure of adversity this season,” Garrett said.

“It’s game one. We must ascertain whether we are as resilient as we purport to be.”

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