49ers to Open the Season vs. New York Jets on Monday Night Football

Bring on the regular season.

Grant Cohn | May 14, 2024

New York Jets QB Aaron Rodgers during the 2023 season opener. / Danielle Parhizkaran / USA TODAY NETWORK

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San Francisco 49ers

What an interesting way to start the season.

The 49ers will open at home on Monday Night Football against Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter. Last season, Rodgers ruptured his Achilles tendon on the fourth play from scrimmage of the Jets' season opener on Monday Night Football. He has not played since that game, and he's 40. So he's not exactly in his prime. And the 49ers beat him any number of times when he was younger on the Packers.

But the Jets aren't the Packers. The Packers with Rodgers always were a soft team. The Jets are not soft. They had the no. 3 defense in the NFL last season and still managed to win 7 games without Rodgers, which is impressive considering their backup quarterbacks were Zach Wilson and Trevor Siemian.

It will be interesting to see how the 49ers defense handles Rodgers and the Jets weapons such as wide receivers Garrett Wilson, Mike Williams and Malachi Corley plus running back Breece Hall.

But the biggest test for the 49ers will be how their offense handles the Jets defense. Because their head coach is Robert Saleh, who used to be the 49ers defensive coordinator and is one of the best defensive coaches in football. He saw what gave the 49ers problems last season when they faced good AFC defenses. It will be fascinating to see which weaknesses in the 49ers offense he chooses to attack and how the 49ers counteract his game plan.

Bring on the regular season.

Published May 14, 2024

GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.