Let’s have some fun with this

We were going to talk about the San Francisco 49ers schedule in-depth once it was released anyways, so let’s dive into it. I’ll give you one takeaway, four must-win games, Matt Maiocco’s four games to travel to, and the four toughest games. Let’s start with one takeaway.

Early bye weeks are for the birds

I do not see the value in a team having a bye week before the sixth week of the season. After two games has a coach ever been like “Our guys could really use a break right now” or “This is a perfect time for us to evaluate our team.” I feel like every year after the first couple weeks we say that the Patriots are done or the Lions are for real. Sample size is everything.

To me, this feels like the schedulers being prisoners of the moment. “We gave them two away games on the east coast to start the season, they deserve a break”, instead of thinking big picture.

4 games that are a must win

The teams that make the playoffs every year are the teams that win the games they’re supposed to. On a consistent basis, at least. If the 49ers are going to sniff the playoffs, these are the four games they have to have next year:

• Week 2-Cincinnati Bengals
• Week 7-@ Washington
• Week 11-Arizona Cardinals
• Week 9-@ Cardinals

All of these teams could have potential rookie QBs playing. If you’re the 49ers, you can’t go down to a first time quarterback if you’re going to be taken serious. Each of those rosters above have significant holes as well. The road games will obviously be tougher, but in the case of the Cardinals, they haven’t beaten the Niners in eight tries.

4 games you should go to

Matt Maiocco of NBC Sports had a cool idea. He ranked the best places to visit.

The season openers are always fun and full of excitement. As someone who lives in Scottsdale, strong disagree on the last one.

4 toughest games

You see wildcard teams sneak in the playoffs from pulling off a couple of upsets throughout the season. The Philadelphia Eagles finished 2018 9-7 after reeling off three victories to end the season. They upset both the Los Angeles Rams and the Houston Texans late in the season. Speaking of the Texans, they took full advantage of having an easy schedule. Using Pro Football Reference’s strength of schedule metric, the Texans SOS was -1.53. The 49ers are at .510 for 2019, which tells us the Niners will face a significantly tougher schedule than a Houston team that won nine games in a row.

The 49ers still have to pull off some upsets. Here are there four toughest games to me:

• Week 6, @ Los Angeles Rams
• Week 13, @ Baltimore Ravens
• Week 14, @ New Orleans Saints
• Week 12, vs. Green Bay Packers

The Packers sneak in there as Green Bay will be coming off of a bye. That’s never easy to deal with when a team has an extra week to prepare.

As for the Rams, that speaks for itself. They carved up the 49ers defense last year, scoring 48 and 39 points in each contest. One thing you can’t do against a superior team is turn the ball over. The 49ers turned it over four times in the game at Levi Stadium.

Baltimore is always a tough place to play, and doing so later in the season isn’t going to make things any easier. I know it was the first time around for teams and Lamar Jackson, but they won. It’s not like Baltimore will have new wrinkles.

Drew Brees home/road splits in 2018 were insane.

At home: 21 TDs, one interception, 321 yards per game, 9.54 adjusted yards per attempt.

On the road: 11 TDs, 4 interceptions, 217 yards per game, 7.04 AY/A.

While Brees only threw two touchdowns all of last December, this is just a different animal at home.