There's 1 NFL schedule quirk the 49ers desperately don't want to see in 2025

The 49ers haven't had the benefit of this one NFL scheduling aspect in recent years, and they hope 2025 will be a different story.

There are some unavoidable aspects of the NFL schedule, especially for West Coast teams like the San Francisco 49ers.

Teams out west typically have to travel much more than East Coast teams, but there isn't exactly a lot the Niners (or the rest of the NFC West) can do about that unless they physically relocate the franchise.

That's not the complaint here, though.

With the 2025 NFL schedule release just around the corner, arguably the No. 1 scheduling quirk San Francisco wants to avoid pertains to something else entirely.

Rest days. Or rest differential, whatever you'd like to call it.

49ers don't want troublesome rest-differential trend to continue in 2025

What's a rest differential? In simple terms, it's the number of days off between football games in comparison with opponents. So, if the 49ers were playing back-to-back regularly scheduled weeks but faced a squad coming off its bye, that'd generate a rest differential of minus-7.

The Niners faced plenty of teams coming off byes last year, as well as others who played Thursday Night Football the previous week, which led to a 2024 season-long rest differential of minus-21.

According to Sharp Football Analysis, last year's differential was the worst any team has had over the last decade.

Even worse, the last two years have seen San Francisco be at a disadvantage by boasting negative differentials of at least minus-20:

None of the other 31 teams have had back-to-back seasons with such brutal differentials.

We know the 49ers opponents this year, and there'll be a lot of travel, yes. But the schedule, to be released on Wednesday, May 14, is still an unknown.

All the Niners can hope for is the schedule makers take into account how important it is to balance the rest between teams on a week-to-week basis.

Please.

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