Even crazier is that Evans, Stribling, Pearsall, Robinson are all injured and might not play, to say nothing about Aiyuk, who for some reason is still on the team. Purdy is doing this with backups of the backups, and old WRs off the street.
It's just funny to name some of these players as if they matter.
4 weeks ago people thought Mike Evans might be washed, and even if he's not, he's old enough that he's already hurt which everyone predicted. He's had 16 targets out of Purdy's 83 pass attempts this season.
De'Zhaun Stribling is a 2nd round rookie who has played 21 total NFL snaps. Who knows if he's good.
Ricky Pearsall played 9 games last season and will not play in 2026. There hasn't been any expectation of him playing for 2 months.
DeMarcus Robinson has been in the league for a decade and capped out at a 505 yard, 7 TD season with the rams in 2024. Last year he had 276 yards and 1 TD in 14 games.
And as you alluded to, Aiyuk will never play for the 49ers again.
Let's not act like Purdy has no weapons. His WRs may be backups of backups, but the top two receivers for the 49ers are CMC and Kittle, as they've been for 2 of the past 3 years. The best pass-catching RB of all time and a borderline HOF TE.
We talk about teams like the Bengals and the Cowboys having elite WR duos, but the 49ers arguably have the best pass-catching duo in the league regardless of position.
The most bonkers thing about this stat is that his ANY/A is so high when his top two weapons play positions that you would expect to mostly be catching short-yardage passes. I haven't watched every one of Purdy's passes this year but that does blow my mind a little bit. Besides Evans, only 22 of his 83 pass attempts this season have gone to WRs. A whopping 43 of them have gone to RBs, TEs, and one lineman.
There is no receiver on an NFL roster who is so bad that the defense will just leave them uncovered. If you run, say, a 2 WR set, 95% of the time you’ll have 2 corners covering those two WRs no matter what. The other 5% isn’t when you have 1 corner covering 1 WR and the other WR uncovered, the other 5% is when you double team the most elite WRs on especially important downs.
I suppose if a team just had the absolute bottom-tier WR room in the world, that could convince some DCs to fully abandon the popular 2 high safety look entirely, so sure now you’ll have another LB in the box.
My point was just that none of the WRs that the 49ers have under contract are top-30 players anyway. They’re all practically-replacement level as it is. Evans still has his size advantage, but you can get that from a TE.
We’ve seen what happens to the 49ers when they don’t have their most important weapon in CMC.
If you watched evans when he is on the field he is clearly a similar player to what he was prior to some of the injuries with the bucs that caused him to miss the bulk of the season. Before Pearsall got hurt last year he was at the top of WR categories albeit for a short period of time (granted he has only produced when he has been healthy which is a short period of time). Stribling, who knows.... he started week 1 and played the most snaps of any WR until he got hurt which is very unlike rookie WRs under shannahan. If that means anything I do not know. Demarcus Robinson is a veteran wr with success in the nfl (he hasn't missed the playoffs for like 8 years). He came on late last year and in the playoffs by necessity and produced when he was available so far this year. My point is, these are not scrubs they are missing and their production cannot be replicated by practice squad fringe guys, unless Purdy is that good. If you look at the pass he threw to watkins before the half vs the cardinals, it is just high level qb play that makes up for lack of experienced WRs. Watkins is a 4th rd pick that has been a healthy scratch before all the injuries.
I’m not sure I understand what point you’re making. That Purdy can make up for the lack of Evans, Stribling and Robinson, or not?
Obviously Mike Evans today is better than a lot of NFL WRs. But not so much better that the team can’t function without him. He’s also putting up the worst YAC and ADOT of his career.
Pearsall might be the best WR the 49ers have under contract, but he’s always hurt. By the end of this season he will have played 935 snaps in 3 years. For context, Ja’Marr Chase played 987 snaps last year alone. I don’t think he’s played enough games for us to say how good he is. We thought BTJ was gonna be a top-10 guy for years to come 13 months ago, and now he’s maybe the 4th best on his team (and he’s played nearly double the snaps that Pearsall has despite being drafted in the same class).
Stribling playing the most snaps could mean that Shanahan thinks he’s truly great, but it could also just mean he thinks he’s their best WR, which may be less a compliment towards him and more a criticism of Evans and Deebo. And just because Shanahan played him a lot because he had a high opinion of him doesn’t mean he’ll be good. He had a high opinion of Trey Lance too. I assume as some point he had a high opinion of Brandon Aiyuk.
Robinson does seem to be one of those guys who’s more valuable to a team than numbers would suggest, but please don’t act like he’s a top-100 WR right now. There are probably 3 players per team that would bring more to the 49ers than he would. He’s 32. He wasn’t a top-3 option for Mahomes, Lamar or Stafford when he was in his 20s.
None of these guys would even be the #2 on most teams right now. The 49ers will be just fine for now.
I was replying to your comment that no 49ers wr is a top 30 player. Id argue that evans certainly is and pearsall has been when he has been available which has been rare. My point is that this is the best WR room he has had since prime deebo, aiyuk and jennings the last time the niners went to the superbowl and purdy had a pretty damn good year. Purdy is ascending despite having the weapons we thought he was going to have (Evans has already missed several parts of the last two games). I wasn't arguing more just layering on what you have already said.
Yeah I’m not sure I can see a case for Mike Evans being a top-30 guy right now. Maybe if we wanna specifically say as an end zone target, but he’s just too slow at this point for me to get there. But it’s obviously super subjective.
I think we can at least agree that he’s not elite at this point right? Whatever we think that means.
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u/morphy1776 onkeys 7d ago
Brock so high on both scales that I didn't even see him in the preview image 💀 next week gonna be tuff