And you thought the 49ers had it bad.
If you read the comments when we wrote on the San Francisco 49ers 2019 schedule, you’d know fans are none too happy with the way things worked out. The 49ers have four road games with the dreaded 10:00 A.M. start times which can cause all sorts of issues with west coast teams having to travel.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Rams by comparison, only get slapped with the morning start time twice on the road in their stops against the Carolina Panthers and Atlanta Falcons. Also, the majority of their cross country opponents, the Ravens, Saints, Buccaneers, etc, is coming to L.A. That said, the Steelers are coming to San Francisco for the 49ers, but still it seems a bit skewed.
There’s no perfect system in this regard. No one is going to be happy. There will be too little prime time games or too much travel where no fan is happy with how the NFL made these schedules.
Things could be far worse than the 49ers. The Oakland Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers both face a six-week stretch of not playing at home. These aren’t six road games, it includes a bye and the London game. Say what you want about the 49ers, that is flat-out brutal.
Someone in the NFL, however, has some regret. In a recent article, USA Today writer Nate davis quoted NFL vice president of broadcasting Michael North. North said he’d like to give the Buccaneers and Raiders schedule a mulligan:
“This is one that the NFL would love to have back. It’s certainly not unusual for an NFL team to have one home game over a six-week stretch,” NFL vice president of broadcasting Michael North told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday evening. “But when that one home (game) isn’t actually home, this is likely something that the NFL would seek to avoid in the future.
”I’d love a redo on that one.”
When the 49ers have four road games with those start times and then you realize it could be worse within the rest of the league, maybe some change is in order. The 49ers don’t need the “redo” as said above, at least when you compare it to the six-week gauntlets other teams are in, but maybe the entire process needs looked at. When you see the Rams and other teams getting something more favorable, maybe adding more variance in start times, mandatory afternoon starts for visiting west coast teams, or other things to add parity would help.
Former 49ers defensive coordinator and now Denver Broncos head coach Vic Fangio did have a good point about all this dissatisfaction with the schedule release (via Pro Football Talk):
“I’m only interested to see who we play the first two weeks because that’s who you’ll start planning on in the offseason. Other than that, the schedule at this point in the season is really kind of irrelevant. Where the schedule does matter sometimes is during the season you may play teams that might be missing players. That helps you. Or, you might be missing your own players. That hurts you. Or, you get a team that’s on a hot streak and you get them right in the middle of their hot streak, or you get them when they’re playing down a little bit. There’s no way to predict what’s a good schedule.”
I’d say there’s still a chance to make things fair. Then again, I might be asking for too much.
After all, we’re still waiting for the NFL to get officiating right.
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