The 49ers will open their Field of Jeans next season, but reports out of Santa Clara indicate that Levi’s Stadium won’t be hosting it’s first Monday Night Football game during the inaugural season.
Mike Rosenberg of the San Jose Mercury News reports that sources close to the stadium project say that the team will only play Sunday home games in 2014. Concerns about the effects on traffic and the community that 70,000 fans converging on the stadium in the middle of rush hour on a weekday -- Thursday night games would also be included -- would have are the reason why the team will only be playing host on Sundays.
The expectation is that local officials would use the 2014 season to figure out issues with traffic flow and public safety so that the team can ask the league to schedule them for home games on Monday nights in 2015. With a Thursday night road date apparently guaranteed, the 49ers will have up to four other prime time games on the docket when the 2014 schedule is officially announced.
While their new stadium may not be ready for Monday nights, the 49ers’ current one will close out its final season on one. The 49ers’ final regular season game will be on December 23 against Atlanta and it would take a pretty big change in the current standings for the 49ers to host another one in the postseason.