SANTA CLARA — Six years ago, the 49ers and Seattle Seahawks were the hot shots getting flexed into prime time, a season in which the 49ers opened seven games in prime time en route to Super Bowl XLVII.
Wednesday’s reality check: the 49ers annual visit to the Seattle Seahawks got bumped up to a 1:25 p.m. kickoff on Dec. 2, ahead of NBC’s night game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Los Angeles Chargers.
The Raiders got bumped out of the NBC prime-time game the following week, a Dec. 14 home game against the Steelers that will instead start at 1:25 p.m.
As for the 49ers-Seahawks, it’s not so much that Richard Sherman’s return to Seattle is no longer worthy of a national audience.
It’s just, well, the 49ers (2-8) are not who the NFL thought they’d be when, back in April, they assigned five prime-time kickoffs to a team that then featured Jimmy Garoppolo as an undefeated quarterback, rather than an injured one who tore up his knee in Week 3.
Now the 49ers have been ejected from both of their Sunday night games, initially losing an Oct. 21 prime-time date with the Los Angeles Rams, who won that day game 39-10.
The 49ers have not won at Seattle since 2011 nor beaten the Seahawks in their past nine meetings, including the 2012 season’s NFC Championship Game.
This past Monday night, the 49ers blew a fourth-quarter lead in a 27-23 loss to the New York Giants. That marked the fourth loss this season by virtue of a fourth-quarter collapse, and another came in a the 49ers’ other Monday night affair, a 33-30 defeat at the Green Bay Packers on Oct. 15.
So now the NFL has made sure you won’t see the 49ers blow a fourth-quarter lead in prime time again this season. The only other prime-time game the 49ers played was a 34-3 rout of the Raiders on Thursday, Nov. 1.
— Left tackle Joe Staley, for a fourth straight year, received the 49ers’ nomination for the NFL’s Art Rooney Sportsmanship Award. He was a finalist the past two years.
