The San Francisco 49ers will kick off their 2021 campaign with a Week 1 trip to Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan, to play the Lions. It's the first of two road games to start the regular season. The team will face the Eagles in Philadelphia during Week 2.
It took 124 days and over 100,000 variations for the NFL to decide on the 272-game schedule that was announced on May 12. One of the previous versions that was a finalist candidate featured the 49ers playing their season opener against the Minnesota Vikings at Levi's Stadium in front of The Faithful — COVID permitting.
That schedule was close but scrapped because the league wanted to cut down on lengthy back-to-back road trips. In this week's Football Morning in America, Peter King of NBC Sports explained how this desire stole away a home opener from San Francisco to cater to the Vikings (h/t to Peter Panacy of Niner Noise).
"In 2017, the schedule had seven teams with three-game road trips; this year, there are three," wrote King. "In 2017, five teams followed road Monday games with road Sunday games; this year, there's one (Miami, Weeks 16, 17: at New Orleans on Monday, at Tennessee on Sunday). Back to what got fixed in travel disparity in Schedule 102,844.
"Instead of Minnesota traveling to San Francisco and Arizona in Weeks 1 and 2, the league shifted Week 1 to Cincinnati, saving the Vikings three hours of travel time round-trip in the first week."
While that eased the burden for Minnesota, it created back-to-back season-opening East Coast road games for the West Coast-based 49ers. It's unknown where the team's matchup against Detroit was initially scheduled.
As a result of the change, San Francisco will have back-to-back road games in its first three weeks for the third consecutive season. All are on the East Coast. The team faced the New York Jets and New York Giants in Weeks 2 and 3, respectively, last season. It opened the 2019 season with road games against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Cincinnati Bengals.
During each of those previous back-to-back early-season matchups, the 49ers opted to stay on the East Coast between the two road games. The Niners will likely do the same this year. San Francisco won all four of those previous matchups.
Now, the 49ers and Vikings are scheduled to play each other during Week 12. The game sits within a four-game stretch with three road games for San Francisco, two of which are on the East Coast. The Vikings will travel to play the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 1, which will involve an hour-and-a-half flight.
