March 20, 2026 4:25 pm EDT
For as long as Kyle Shanahan has been a play caller in the NFL, the prototypical X receiver has been a key part of his offensive universe.
You can go back to 2008, when Andre Johnson was posting 1,500-yard seasons for the Texans. Julio Jones took up that mantle when Shanahan got to Atlanta in 2015. And during his best days in San Francisco, Brandon Aiyuk was regularly cooking guys on the outside. Shanahan has long weaponized varied personnel, motions and formations to his advantage, but it sure helps in gotta-have-it-moments when you can just throw the big guy.
Enter Mike Evans.
Evans and Jauan Jennings aren’t perfect one-for-one analogs for one another. Jennings provides a little more wiggle on change-of-direction routes that the Niners would use him on occasionally. Additionally, he’s done much more work over the middle of the field than Evans has over the past few seasons. However, it’s not hard to make the argument that Evans has the potential to give San Francisco a super-charged version of what Jennings was bringing to the offense.
Furthermore, what makes Evans such an intriguing addition isn’t the way he can replicate Jennings’ production; it’s the way he can build on it. Even at this stage of his career, Evans is still a significant threat in one-on-one situations, especially as a vertical receiver. Among all wideouts last season with at least 20 targets, only Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Puka Nacua averaged more first downs per route run against man coverage than Evans.
The hope is that Evans helps provide a fix for where San Francisco’s offense finds itself right now. There’s no denying that the Niners are getting older at key positions and that the eye of the needle this offense is trying to thread is getting smaller and smaller as Shanahan tries to push this version of the team over the top. Evans feels like a worthwhile swing at doing just that — an effort to find the final piece of the puzzle before time runs out on the 49ers as we know them.
Mar 20, 2026
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