49ers schedule 2015: San Francisco has 3rd-toughest slate of games

Fooch's Update: 49ers complete 2015 schedule

The San Francisco 49ers will have the third-toughest schedule of all teams in 2015. Going by strength of schedule numbers for the whole league, which is simply the combined 2014 record of all 16 opponents, broken down by winning percentage, the whole NFC West comes in at spots three through six.

Given how strength of schedule works, this is pretty much always the case. The AFC North and the NFC West were the best divisions in football last season and wouldn't you know it, the AFC North and NFC West will face off this season. So the 49ers have to play the rival Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals twice, which was already enough to make it bad, but also the entire AFC North, which had three representatives in the playoffs this past season.

The Baltimore Ravens, Pittsburgh Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals all made the postseason. In all, the 49ers will play nine games against teams that made the postseason last year. That's significant, but it doesn't guarantee that those teams will be just as good this year. Still, their strength of schedule is .561, just below the Steelers and Bengals, and just ahead of the rest of the NFC West.

Of course, all of this isn't exactly new information or anything like that, but with a handy list for the whole league below, it was probably worth discussing. The Atlanta Falcons have the easiest strength of schedule (with the whole of the terrible NFC South taking up spots in the bottom six), while the Rams have the easiest schedule among NFC West teams at .533. We've got the full table below: