Aaron Donald Did Not Travel And Myles Garrett Did

The season starts at 5:35 p.m. Pacific on Thursday, which is 10:35 on Friday morning at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and it is on Netflix. Noah Eagle and Luke Kuechly have the call. San Francisco is the designated visitor against Los Angeles in the first regular-season NFL game played in Australia.

Both teams arrive with a rearranged defensive line. They were rearranged in opposite directions and inside the same week.

What San Francisco lost, and when#

Alfred Collins tore his patellar tendon at the second Melbourne practice and is out for the season. He was the first-team right defensive tackle on the club's own depth chart. Kyle Shanahan announced it, and the club's final Week 1 injury report, published Thursday morning, lists him as the only San Francisco player ruled out.

Shanahan's own framing was not about one man: "Alfred tore his patellar tendon yesterday. That was a big loss. We've lost two D-linemen." The second is Sam Okuayinonu, who went on injured reserve with a broken foot that needs surgery.

So a club that spent August arguing about its offensive line opens the season with a hole on the other side of the ball, made two days before kickoff, on a field eight thousand miles from home.

The rest of the report is quieter than it looks#

Eleven San Francisco players appear on the final Week 1 sheet. Nine of them carry no game designation at all, which on a Thursday report means they play.

That list includes the two names the last fortnight kept circling. Nick Bosa and George Kittle both practised limited on Tuesday and Wednesday and neither appears on the club's designation list. Limited participation on a short week before a flight to Australia is a workload decision, not a verdict, and the absence of a designation is the club saying so.

Dre Greenlaw, Renardo Green, Luke Gifford, Gracen Halton, Romello Height and Kyle Juszczyk are in the same position: on the report, limited both days, no designation. Upton Stout practised in full on both days.

One man is genuinely uncertain. James Thompson Jr. did not practise Tuesday, was limited Wednesday, and is questionable with a hamstring. He is also one of the bodies the club would otherwise turn to at the position it just lost.

The players to watch, and most of them are on the interior#

A preview is for the men a viewer cannot pick out yet, so these carry their numbers.

1. Kevin Givens, No. 90, defensive tackle. Seven seasons in San Francisco, waived in August, back on the practice squad on September 1. Matt Maiocco named him first among the candidates to take Collins's snaps.
2. Sebastian Valdez, No. 55, defensive tackle. The second name on that list, and the one with the widest gap between his best preseason snaps and his worst.
3. Ogbo Okoronkwo, No. 59. The third name, and a veteran, which is the argument for him on a night when the other two have played almost no meaningful football.
4. James Thompson Jr., No. 96, defensive tackle. Undrafted, questionable, and the man whose hamstring decides whether the club has four interior options or three.
5. Nick Bosa, No. 97. No designation, and the whole defensive plan is now built around him being the problem the Rams have to solve.
6. Keion White, No. 56. With Collins gone and Mykel Williams still on the physically unable to perform list, the edge rotation is thinner than the depth chart suggests.
7. George Kittle, No. 85. Limited both days, no designation, and the reliable answer on a night when a young receiving group plays its first regular-season snaps together.
8. Christian McCaffrey, No. 23. He did no drills at the first Melbourne practice and returned at the second.
9. De'Zhaun Stribling, No. 15. The second-round rookie caught seven of eight targets in the preseason opener. This is the first time it counts.
10. Upton Stout, No. 20. The only San Francisco player on the report who practised in full on both days, which on this sheet is its own kind of statement.

And the Rams are not the team they looked like on Wednesday#

Los Angeles lists Aaron Donald as out, for rest, and he did not make the trip. That much was reported before the sheet confirmed it.

Myles Garrett is the correction. He did not practise on the first day and was a full participant on the second, and he carries no designation, so he plays. A reading of this game that has both of the Rams' best linemen unavailable is a reading of Wednesday rather than of Thursday.

Grant Stuard, Jaylen Watson, Tyler Higbee, Alaric Jackson and Byron Young are all on the Rams sheet without designations. Three of those five were listed for rest rather than injury.

So the matchup is a San Francisco interior line assembled on two days' notice against a Rams front that got its best pass rusher back. That is the game, and it starts before dinner on the west coast.

Sources: the 49ers' official Week 1 injury report, read Thursday morning; the club's depth chart; Kyle Shanahan's announcement of the Collins injury as reported by Matt Maiocco at NBC Sports Bay Area and Nick Wagoner at ESPN; Maiocco for the replacement candidates; the NFL's Melbourne broadcast details via Netflix.