The receiver the San Francisco 49ers signed to headline their rebuilt pass-catching group is on the outside of the league’s top 10. Mike Evans landed in the honorable mention section of ESPN’s wide receiver rankings published Tuesday, compiled by Jeremy Fowler from the votes of league executives, coaches and scouts. As 49ers Webzone’s David Bonilla noted, Evans ranked No. 9 in last year’s edition and No. 8 in 2024.
The slip tracks the résumé’s one bad line. Evans played just eight games for Tampa Bay in 2025, sidelined by hamstring and clavicle injuries, and the 1,000-yard streak that had reached 11 consecutive seasons — every year of his career to that point — ended with them. The voters’ explanation was less about talent than time. “He’s declining, but he’s sort of timeless, still big and athletic and gets open,” an NFC scout told Fowler. “Will be interesting to see how [head coach] Kyle Shanahan utilizes him in different ways.”
Inside the building, the assessment runs warmer. Trent Williams recently called Evans a “Hall of Fame player,” per 49ers Webzone, and the six-time Pro Bowler arrives with 13,052 career receiving yards and 108 touchdowns from 12 seasons in Tampa.
The gap between those two readings is San Francisco’s bet, and the survey series kept underlining it this week. The same rankings left Brock Purdy among the honorable mentions at quarterback on Monday, meaning two of the offense’s central pieces enter camp ranked just outside the tiers where evaluators place proven difference-makers.
The scout’s own sentence contains the case for the signing: “still big and athletic and gets open” describes the boundary size and red-zone catch radius the 49ers overhauled their receiver room to add. If eight games and two injuries were the anomaly, San Francisco enters the season with a receiver the rest of the league is quietly undervaluing. If the first word of that quote was the operative one, a roster built to win now spent its biggest offensive swing on the wrong side of a career curve.
The answer starts arriving quickly. Evans opens his first 49ers training camp when the team begins 11 open practices at the SAP Performance Facility on July 26.
