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49ers to request consecutive Eastern time zone games

PHOENIX -- Besides their usual NFC West road games, the San Francisco 49ers will travel in to play at the Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Giants in 2015.

And in an effort to ease travel pains, Niners CEO Jed York said Tuesday at the NFL owners meetings he would request the league to schedule any two of those games to be played on consecutive weekends. The Niners would then spend the week between said games in the York family’s homestead of Youngstown, Ohio, rather than fly back and forth to the Bay Area, as they did in early-season games in 2011 and 2012.

“Any time we’ve got multiple East Coast games,” York said, “we’ll try to do it.”

In 2011, the Youngstown stay occurred between games at the Cincinnati Bengals and Philadelphia Eagles. A year later, it was between games at the Minnesota Vikings and New York Jets.

The schedule is expected to be announced the third week of April.

“It makes it so much easier on the team, as opposed to going and coming back,” York said. “We’re always one of the top travel teams in the league, so if you can cut out 6,000 miles of travel, it helps.”

Consider the case of the Oakland Raiders: They have lost 16 straight games in the Eastern time zone, dating to 2009, by a combined score of 472-261, or by an average score of 30-16.

The 49ers, meanwhile, have been cleared to play host to a Monday Night Football game at year-old Levi’s Stadium for 2015, after being limited to weekend and holiday primetime games in the stadium’s inaugural season. The thinking was to get a gauge on how Santa Clara traffic would work before going live on a week night.

As far as the preseason goes, York said the only game the Niners are currently locked into would be at the San Diego Chargers.

And finally, with Levi’s Stadium playing host to Super Bowl L, San Jose State, Stanford and the Raiders' compound in Alameda are being considered as home bases for the two Super Bowl teams.