The Rams barely had time to unpack their bruised egos from Australia before their season took another punch to the gut.

Losing to the 49ers was bad enough.

Losing Myles Garrett makes the recovery considerably more complicated.

Days after the 49ers dismantled them, 27-7, in Melbourne, the Rams are facing an extended stretch without the pass rusher they acquired to help turn their Super Bowl ambitions into reality. Garrett is headed for arthroscopic knee surgery and injured reserve, with an absence of at least four games looming.

Suddenly, a team that spent the offseason collecting reasons to believe is accumulating reasons to worry.

And the biggest concern goes beyond how many games Garrett misses.

Rams’ Biggest Concerns

What version of Garrett will the Rams get when he returns?

That is the question hanging over a season that already looks considerably more challenging than the summer sales pitch suggested.

Everyone can hope the procedure addresses what has been bothering Garrett, that rehabilitation goes smoothly and that he eventually resumes terrorizing opposing offensive lines.

But hope doesn’t strap on shoulder pads. It doesn’t chase down quarterbacks, command double teams or slam the door on a fourth-quarter comeback.

Healthy players do.

And for all the optimism the Rams might summon, this much remains true: An in-season knee surgery does not come with a guarantee that everything troubling the knee disappears once the stitches do.

Recovery depends on the underlying damage and the procedure performed. Without those specifics, nobody outside Garrett’s medical team should be assigning certainty to his recovery, much less predicting when he will regain his full explosiveness.

There is returning to football.

Then there is returning to being Myles Garrett.

The Rams invested heavily in the second outcome.

Garrett’s revised contract spans five years and $208.2 million, with $37 million fully guaranteed this season and $99 million guaranteed through 2028. That followed a trade that cost the Rams Jared Verse and three draft picks, including their 2027 first-round selection.

That is a substantial commitment of money, youth and future flexibility to a player expected to make the present overwhelming for opponents.

It also makes this more than an ordinary September injury.

The Rams surrendered a young, established pass rusher to acquire an extraordinary one. Now the extraordinary one needs surgery, and the player who might otherwise have helped absorb his absence is in Cleveland.

That does not invalidate the trade.

It does expose the risk.

Myles Garrett Far From Young

Garrett is 30 and turns 31 in December. That hardly makes him washed up, especially coming off a season in which he set the NFL record with 23 sacks. His recent production supplied plenty of justification for the Rams’ conviction.

But his age belongs in the conversation when the investment extends well into his 30s and his first season in Los Angeles has already been interrupted by knee surgery.

And now is probably a good time to remember why the Rams made that investment: to squeeze a championship out of what could be 38-year-old Matthew Stafford’s final season.

That makes every game Garrett misses more than a temporary inconvenience. It is time the Rams might not have to spare.

The warning signs were there throughout training camp, when Garrett missed time. Then came Australia, where he finished without a tackle or sack and delivered a brutally honest assessment of himself.

“This was the worst version of myself that I’ve put out there,” Garrett said.

At the time, those words sounded like an elite player demanding more of himself.

Now they also frame the concern that demanding more and physically delivering it could be two different things.

Meanwhile, the problems exposed by the 49ers remain.

Rams Defense Left with a Hole

Stafford and the offense still have to find their footing. Sean McVay still has to explain through his team’s response why an opening-night humiliation will become a correction rather than a preview.

And the defense must find ways to affect quarterbacks without the player acquired to make that task considerably easier.

Aaron Donald’s anticipated return offers encouragement. But expecting him to immediately compensate for Garrett’s absence adds another assumption to a team that has already been reminded how little assumptions accomplish.

The Rams still have enough talent to recover. One loss and a September surgery do not close their championship window.

They do, however, change the conversation.

Three of the four games Garrett is slated to miss will be against elite competition. After hosting the New York Giants in Week 2, the Rams will play at Denver, at Philadelphia, and host the Buffalo Bills.

A few days ago, the question was how imposing the Rams might become once all their pieces came together.

Now it is how long they can withstand having a central piece missing, and whether that piece will fit the same way when it comes back.

The 49ers handed the Rams a loss they can answer on the field.

Garrett’s knee has handed them uncertainty they cannot simply outplay.