Mike Evans

But now they're on a bye.

Everybody's hopefully getting healthy and we get Mike Evans back.

But what Fitz said is like, if you're at the time now where you're looking at your bench and you're like, hey – I have four running backs.

My fourth one is somebody I can plug in my flex band night.

Uh, some other names that are floating out there.

Malachi fields was four for 83, only 4% roster Jordan Watkins.

You know, it's all not Mike Evans stuff, but he did get six targets.

I thought it was interesting.

The first game after a Dobbs goes down and an A.J. Brown comes back in, you're just not sure what the personnel packages are going to look like.

In this particular situation with a team like San Francisco losing both Debo and Mike Evans and already having Stribling on the IR, then you know, you know for a fact a guy like Jordan Watkins who can make big plays down the field is going to get a 70% snap share.

He's going to run 70% of the routes as well.

So get him in there and see what happens.

I don't have the numbers, but very little true five-man rushes or even six-man rushes.

A lot of just bringing in four, and I don't know how much, whether it was Mike Evans' deal and not feeling like you can cover those guys or whatever, or just wanting to keep everything in front of you and feeling like we could get to party with the four-man rush.

But in the second half...

You saw how things really changed for us, held them to like 64 yards in the second half, and a lot of that was more aggressive, bringing pressure, playing tighter coverage, sometimes just challenging those guys and playing man-to-man coverage.

Two things were also happening in the second half.

They were down 20 points, so they had to force the issue, right? So they had to make some plays.

And then secondarily, Mike Evans was out.

And I think that changed things the second he was out.

I would say with that statistic, you know, having guys who can win one-on-one when everybody in the stadium knows you're throwing, I don't know that they've had those guys at the receiver position.

I do think when they get Mike Evans back, he can, he can potentially erase that statistic.

That's been following Kyle for a long time.

So I'm not, Eventually, the injury is going to catch up with you.

So he impacted the game.

But my note on someone who has watched every snap of Niners football this year, I hope we're talking about Jordan Watkins down the stretch here as someone who's a – you know, consistent playmaker for this Niners offense, I think he needs to be.

And whether it's, you know, Brock throwing to him or Kyle scheming more plays for him, to me, he's their most explosive wide receiver when Mike Evans is out right now.

Like Cooks, Kirk, these other guys, I think Watkins provides more than those than those receivers do.

Yeah, I think to your point, it is a lot about injuries in this circumstance because, look, the 49ers were able to overcome a lot of those injuries early in the season because Kyle Shanahan is a great coach and Brock Purdy was playing at a high level.

Losing Mike Evans was such a blow to this receiving core.

We saw it in the second half of their game against the Commanders in Week 6, where they only scored three points in the second half after losing Evans.

They went three and out on three of their four drives.

They know how banged up they are.

They know they're going into the week eight by.

If they can get Mike Evans back in short order, they should be in good shape.

But the longer he remains out with all the injuries they have in that receiving core, the harder life is going to be on Brock Purdy to try to lead this team to victory.

Sure, it was going to come in a negative.

And maybe Mike Evans wouldn't have played yesterday for this team.

But the Chiefs didn't try, in my opinion, to improve at wide receiver.

They didn't try.

So...

You can't just say Mike Evans got hurt and now, whoa, come on, Mike Evans ain't even been there for years.

You know what I'm saying? So I don't think it was that, but I still think the Niners is still the team to beat in the West because, shit, they already beat the Rams.

They already beat the Seahawks.

They score one, but the kid gives one away while he's in the blue tent.

Comes out for that third quarter after he did start on a nice 10-play drive to open the game, and it looked like the Niners were just going to come in and do their Niners thing without Mike Evans, right? Yeah.

But Watkins looks like another one who's pretty darn good.

They're going on a bye.

So how much do they need a bye week? I can only imagine, especially watching that game on Sunday, yesterday, the Niners' first loss of the season, falling to the Falcons in Atlanta.

Yes, the injury to Mike Evans and all that, basically their entire wide receiver room just having a week to get them right, to get them rested.

Christian McCaffrey hurting his thigh in that game, so giving him a little bit of time to make sure he's okay and good to go.

The rest, everybody could use it.

And I do want to give the Atlanta defense its credit because I do feel, you know, they were doing things to get a little more pressure on Brock when he did not have all of his weapons at hand.

He...

Can't have that third down immediate like Mike Evans.

You know you're going to go there and he's probably going to catch it, right? Your safety target.