When the 49ers’ 2017 regular-season schedule was announced a year ago, San Francisco was slotted to play just one prime-time television game, a Week 3 matchup against the Los Angeles Rams.
That’s what happens when you’re coming off a 2-14 season and have a starting quarterback named Brian Hoyer.
Now, everything is different.
When the 2018 schedule was announced Thursday night, the 49ers were set to play five prime-time games. After winning their final five games of 2017 with new quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, the Niners suddenly look like a team on the rise, with a quarterback everybody wants to see.
As Matt Barrows of the Sacramento Bee wrote, the 49ers suddenly are “a prime-time darling.”
The 49ers’ first night game will be in Week 6 on the road in Green Bay for an Oct. 15 Monday night matchup with the Packers, followed by prime-time games the next three weeks, against the Rams at home on Sunday night, Oct. 21; in Arizona on Sunday night Oct. 28; and against the cross-bay Oakland Raiders on Thursday night, Nov. 1.
The 49ers are then prime-time players again on Sunday, Dec. 2, against the Seahawks in Seattle.
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As Joe Fann of the 49ers website points out, the five prime-time appearances are the most allowed at the time of the schedule release.
So far in his NFL career, Garoppolo has a 7-0 record as a starting quarterback. The NFL schedule makers are banking he’ll continue to dazzle under the lights in 2018.
