The NFL had their big schedule release event on May 14, and so now the San Francisco 49ers, like the rest of the league, are aware of not only who they are playing and where, but when, which is a key component to making the entire season work.
The Niners' 2025 schedule, including pre-season matchups, is as follows:
An undeniable fact of every 49ers season is the travel. As a West Coast team in a league that is heavily balanced in the Midwest and Eastern part of the country, this is par for the course. Bill Speros, a columnist for the Boston Herald, broke down the miles, and not surprisingly, teams like the Niners, Seattle Seahawks, Los Angeles Chargers, and Los Angeles Rams are among the leaders (plus the Jacksonville Jaguars, who play in London, and a lot of West Coast teams).
That's not a quirk for San Francisco's schedule so much as it is to be expected.
The most bizarre element of the Niners' 2025 slate is how frequently they play back-to-back road games as compared to the same situation with contests at Levi's Stadium.
Leaving behind the fact the 49ers are not starting the season at home, it's unfortunate that the year begins with not one, but two road games, and that each game is in a different time zone, with the season opener in Seattle followed by a trip in Week 2 to the New Orleans Saints.
The second such run starts in Week 5 where the Niners play in Los Angeles against the Rams on Thursday Night Football, followed by a trip to Tampa Bay to face the Buccaneers 10 days later. The mini-bye after the Thursday game helps belie this a bit, but stacking travel twice inside of three weeks isn't ideal.
Then after one home game in Week 7 against the Atlanta Falcons, the 49ers get their third such stretch of the season with trips to the Houston Texans and New York Giants, which gives San Francisco two 10:00 a.m. local times to contend with on top of travel halfway and then all the way across the country.
Those trips are exacerbated by the fact the 49ers only have two back-to-back games at home, and they come at the beginning (Weeks 3 and 4) and very end (Weeks 17 and 18) of the season. Their bye week (horribly slotted in Week 14) is even sandwiched between a road game at the Cleveland Browns and the Tennessee Titans coming to Levi's Stadium.
If there's a silver lining to this, at least the Niners' rest advantage is in their favor this year, but the way the home games are scattered, this doesn't feel like a helpful thing, especially when the team's non-conference opponents are all the middle of the country or on the East Coast.
You have to play the schedule you're given, and at least the quality of the opponents isn't great due to the last-place schedule.
But this particular quirk feels like it won't be ideal for San Francisco's chances of a bounce-back season in 2025.
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