49ers 2025 schedule analysis: Looking at the key (and hidden) pros and cons

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The NFL schedule — 100% marathon, 100% sprint, and 200% hype — is here.

The 49ers will open and close their 2025 regular season with games against a prominent divisional rival, the Seattle Seahawks. Either 119 or 120 days — enough time for a lot to change — will pass between those bookending NFC West matchups.

Then the playoffs will begin. And if the 49ers have their way, their season will continue deep into that tournament, which extends through January and into February 2026.

Full 49ers 2025-26 regular season schedule

The 49ers had known their opponents for several months; Wednesday simply revealed the order in which they’ll face them and the times of the games. The 49ers will play in five prime -time games, making this the fourth consecutive season that they’ve played in at least that many nationally televised contests under the lights. They’ll also have a Week 14 bye — that’s a very late bye — for the first time in their franchise history.

Here are our takeaways from the first look at the journey ahead.

Even though it’s impossible to know exactly how good teams will be, the 49ers are in line to enjoy the benefits of a last-place schedule. Winning the NFC West in 2022 and 2023 meant the 49ers had to play other NFC division winners in subsequent seasons. But their 6-11 finish in 2024 sets up games against other cellar dwellers: at the Giants (3-14), versus the Bears (5-12), and at the Saints (3-14).

It’s also the NFC West’s turn to play the AFC South, which was the worst division in football last season. Not a single one of its teams finished with a positive point differential in 2024. The 49ers will travel to face the Texans (10-7) and Colts (8-9). They’ll host the Jaguars (4-13) and Titans (3-14), who were so bad they earned the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft.

Teams on the West Coast, where cities are farther apart than their counterparts back east, consistently rack up more travel mileage. Last year, the 49ers ranked second behind Seattle with about 30,000 miles traveled in the regular season.

The NFL did not award the 49ers any international games, which will lower their total mileage this season. There are six such games spread between South America and Europe. For the first time ever, one team — the Minnesota Vikings — is participating in two international games, playing in Dublin and London over back-to-back weeks.

Assuming the 49ers don’t stay over in the Central or Eastern time zone between back-to-back road games (their only opportunity to do so would be between games at Houston and New York in early November), they will rack up 28,363 travel miles in 2025. That ranks fifth.

West Coast teams are also at a documented disadvantage in games with an “early body-clock start.” Those come in either the Central or Eastern time zones, but with kickoffs that correspond to 10 a.m. Pacific time.

The 49ers have five such games this season, the most since 2017 — when they also had five. This year’s early kicks come at New Orleans, Tampa Bay, Houston, New York, and Cleveland.

But there’s a flip side in this dance of circadian rhythms. A Stanford study showed that West Coast teams benefit in prime-time games against East Coast teams, which are far past their prime windows for athletic performance at the time of late kickoffs. (Sunday Night Football usually lasts under midnight in Eastern time.)

Of the 49ers’ five prime-time games, four come against teams from either the Eastern or Central time zones: Atlanta, Carolina, Indianapolis, and Chicago.

So perhaps most of the 49ers’ early body-clock disadvantage will be wiped out by those late starts.

The schedule did the 49ers no favors in 2024. Their net rest differential of negative-22 days — a cumulative measure of how many extra rest days they have in relation to their opponents — was the third worst of the 704 schedules the NFL produced from 2002 to 2024. (Stunningly, another of those three unfortunate schedules belonged to the … 2023 49ers.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the 49ers — who’d entered the season having played a league-high 60 games over the preceding three seasons, thanks to a trio of deep playoff runs — finished their 2024 marathon exhausted and very injured.

So, what’s the 49ers’ net rest differential here in 2025? We don’t immediately have that number, because it will require examination of opponents’ schedules to calculate. But we’ll have it soon — and will update the bottom of this analysis once it’s available.

Here’s some early good news: No 49ers opponent this season will be coming off its bye week. Last season, the 49ers faced four teams that were coming off their bye. That was the primary ingredient in the 49ers’ atrocious net rest differential.

So check back later for what is definitely the most important hidden number in the 49ers’ schedule release. Based on early clues, it’ll almost certainly be better than last year’s devastating mark.