The 49ers’ schedule was never going to be easy. Despite a pair of teams in their division rebuilding, San Francisco is set to face a slew of tough opponents in 2023 thanks in part to their first-place finish last year.
While we’ve known the opponents for awhile, the layout of the schedule plays a role in how difficult some of those games look.
For San Francisco there wasn’t a path to an “easy” schedule no matter how things shook out. However, favorable travel dates and a couple other factors mitigate some of the potential pitfalls of traveling to the East Coast four times during the year.
While the team avoided some potentially backbreaking travel, there’s still a really rough stretch of games through the heart of their schedule that could define the 2023 season.
Here’s a look at that stretch: