It’s entirely too early for predictions.
The middle of May is basically no-man’s land in the NFL offseason. Rookie minicamps have wrapped, on-field OTAs haven’t started, and we’re still a month out from any mandatory offseason work. The draft is done. Free agency is mostly finished, and now the guessing games begin.
That’s what all preseason prognostication is, really. It’s making guesses based on analysis that’s typically too optimistic or too pessimistic. The problem with predictions this early is that injuries can change things. Trades can change things (shoutout to Baker Mayfield and/or Jimmy Garoppolo). Even one or two dominant rookies can tip the scales (shoutout to Ja’Marr Chase).
All that being said, the NFL schedule was released last week and officially paved the way for a season prediction – however haphazard – to be made. So we made one.
We went through game-by-game on the 49ers’ 2022 schedule to try to predict the winner and the score of each contest. We’re assuming good health and, for the 49ers’ purposes, that Trey Lance is the team’s Week 1 starter.
With full acknowledgement that even one of these scores being close would be a small miracle, here is our rough draft edition of the 49ers’ 2022 game-by-game predictions: