2025 Season Recap
Usually, to kick off these Path to a WR1 Season articles, I would lead you down one of two paths: either “oh my goodness, look how awesome this guy was last season; if these trends continue…aay!” or “hey, this was clearly a down year for my guy and positive regression to the mean is definitely coming”. Well, unfortunately I cannot really do either of those for Mike Evans as we only got to see him take the field on eight occasions in 2025 – and truth be told – he was really only healthy for a handful of those. The data set does not feel large enough to take too much from, but if we are going to peddle the “positive regression” narrative, those catch percentage and yards-per-catch figures were career lows for the former Aggie, and at 65% of snaps played, it is the least we have seen of #13 on the field in any year outside 2024.
| PTS | PPG | SNP% | TGT | REC | CTCH% | YDS | Y/C | LNG | TD |
| 69.8 | 8.7 | 65% | 61 | 30 | 49% | 368 | 12.3 | 45 | 3 |
Putting on my rose tinted glasses, the positive POV is that the perennial 1,000-yard man was hurt, and this definitely was not the second-ballot Hall of Famer falling off the age cliff…however, Evans is on the wrong side of thirty and by the time he takes to the field donning his fancy new 49ers uniform for the first time in San Francisco’s “home” opener in Melbourne (yes, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA)…he will hopefully have recovered from having blown out 33 candles on his cake three-weeks earlier. 2025 may have been the first year Evans failed to hit four-digit receiving yardage, but I am fully confident he is set for a bounce-back year as he switches one Bay Area for another. Sure, he may be the fourth oldest active WR in the National Football League (Keenan Allen, do not ruin my stat), but as the Father of American Literature and famous moustachio Mark Twain once penned: “age is a matter of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter”…and let me tell you, when it comes to Brock Purdy’s new No.1 WR…I do not mind one little bit.
Editor’s Note: This profile is part of our annual Path to a Fantasy WR1 Season series. For our methodology and an outline of the process, make sure you read the 2026 Path to WR1 Series Primer. Find out the full statistical projections for the Footballers Consensus WR1s in the Ultimate Draft Kit.
The Path for 2026
It may be Evans’ thirteenth season in the National Football League, but it will be his first not sporting the skull and crossed-swords of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Levi’s Stadium may not have a full-blown pirate ship, but what it lacks in swash-buckling thematics, it more than makes up for in footballing talent. Big Mike joins an offense with arguably the best overall RB, TE, and head coach in the entire league, and although this sounds like a recipe for disaster for a veteran recovering from a season plagued by injury, I tend to look at his move west in a similar light to all those optimistic prospectors from the mid-1800s…becuase let me tell you, Mike Evans on this 49ers team is going to be fantasy gold.
Target Share
I will be the first to admit, trying to project just how many targets Evans is going to receive in 2026 is a somewhat daunting task – after all, this is a team with a RB who has three of the top four RB receiving seasons ever, and is fresh off a campaign which saw him haul in 102 of his 129 total targets. Sure, Christian McCaffrey may have recorded the fourth most receptions by an RB in regular season history last time out, but it was the first time where a non-WR led this 49ers offense in catches since 2019 – and for context – only the third time throughout the 12 seasons that new kid on the block Mike Evans has been in the league.
| Year | Player | TGT | TGT% | Team Rank | Fantasy Finish |
| 2025 | Jauan Jennings | 90 | 16.40% | 2 | WR31 |
| 2024 | Jauan Jennings | 113 | 22% | 1 | WR27 |
| 2023 | Brandon Aiyuk | 105 | 22.40% | 1 | WR14 |
| 2022 | Brandon Aiyuk | 114 | 22.60% | 1 | WR13 |
| 2021 | Deebo Samuel Sr. | 121 | 24.30% | 1 | WR2 |
| 2020 | Brandon Aiyuk | 96 | 17.30% | 1 | WR33 |
| 2019 | Deebo Samuel Sr. | 81 | 17.30% | 2 | WR29 |
| 2018 | Kendrick Bourne | 66 | 12.80% | 2 | WR64 |
| 2017 | Marquise Goodwin | 105 | 17.50% | 1 | WR31 |
| 2016 | Jeremy Kerley | 115 | 23.60% | 1 | WR58 |
| 2015 | Anquan Boldin | 111 | 21.10% | 1 | WR41 |
| 2014 | Anquan Boldin | 130 | 26.90% | 1 | WR21 |
With Jauan Jennings heading to Minnesota alongside Justin Jefferson, and Brandon Aiyuk heading to social media alongside Antonio Brown, the 49ers are in desperate need of a true WR1 – and in Evans, they may just have gotten their first pure lead receiving talent since Anquan Boldin over a decade ago. CMC and George Kittle will undoubtedly continue to be peppered heavily by Brock Purdy, but with the departing Jennings and Kendrick Bourne vacating over 150 targets between them, there will be plenty of opportunities for someone to step up at the alpha in this offense and be hugely relevant for fantasy purposes – and are we really saying Ricky Pearsall (he has had his shot…no pun intended), Christian Kirk (one-year, $2.8m contract) or rookie De’Zhaun Stribling will lead this team in 2026? Evans’ three-year $42m deal says he’s the man.
Jumping into The Fantasy Footballers Ultimate Draft Kit, the Ballers each project Evans to have 109 (Andy), 119 (Mike), and 126 (Jason) targets, respectively. Big Mike has seen this level of service (or less) on six occasions in his illustrious career…and finished as a fantasy WR1 in five of them, the most recent in 2024. He is still an elite lever talent who can sustain high-level fantasy production on relatively “low” volume.
Receptions and Catch Rate
Speaking of low-volume…
Those of us who have been playing fantasy football for the duration of Evans’ career know that he has never been much of a PPR guy. In his 12 seasons as a Buccaneer (11 of those with 14+ games), Evans has finished inside the top-12 at the position in terms of receptions only once…yet he has been a WR1 for fantasy purposes on no fewer than eight occasions. Unlike others, Magic Mike simply does not need 100+ grabs every season to finish as an elite option for your roster.
I know what you are thinking: “With a relatively modest number of targets every year, his catch percentage must be through the roof!”…well, not exactly. At a career catch rate of 58%, Evans sits just below the overall NFL average of 58.9%…but considering this is a guy who has seen almost 1,500 balls come his way, that ain’t too shabby. It does however fall well short of the 78% success rate that Puka Nacua has set so far in his young career, so there are some causes for concern here, especially when you factor in that Evans had the likes of Jameis Winston, Baker “Laser” Mayfield, and some guy named Tom Brady (I had never heard of him either) tossing him the pigskin…this is most certainly not a Garrett Wilson situation.
Whereas Wilson seems eternally doomed to catch passes (well, try to) from a growing list of has-beens and never-wills, Evans looks to be ending his career with another reliable pocket-passing QB on one of the most powerful – and efficient – offenses in the league. In 2025, the 49ers ranked eighth in EPA/Play (that’s Expected Points Added) and have finished top-10 in each of the last four seasons under Kyle Shanahan…so we already know that this is going to be a highly productive offense, particularly in the passing game – a match made in heaven for a big-bodied WR who thrives on efficiency.
Getty Images / Icon Sportswire
Yards, Yards/REC and aDOT
Let’s just start here by pointing out the incredibly large 1,000-yard elephant in the room. In every single season that Mike Evans has played 14 or more games in the National Football League, he has smashed the thousand-yard ceiling in receiving yards. Ok, so “smashed” may not exactly be the most appropriate way to describe his 2017 (1,001 yards), 2020 (1,006 yards), and 2024 (1,004 yards) campaigns – but the point stands that he did eclipse that benchmark, and for a professional athlete that is statistically and psychologically significant. Sure, the consecutive streak is gone after 2025’s injury-blighted season, but when you fall off the horse, you get up, and right back on – and Evans will be chomping at the bit to get back in the saddle as the leading WR for a team Vegas has installed as 5th favorites to lift the Lombardi Trophy at SoFi next February.
I mentioned Evans’ relatively low-volume above, yet despite not seeing elite-level looks over the years, he has remained an elite-level producer…thanks in no small part to his spectacular yards per catch. Throughout his 12 seasons in the league, Evans has averaged a monstrous 15.1 Y/C – and while that may seem a little underwhelming if you look at Alec Pierce – the single-season stat leader from 2025 – and his 21.3 Y/C, we need to remember that this is Mike’s average for well over a decade…not just a one-off boom year. Amongst all active WRs with 200+ career receptions, Evans ranks fourth behind only Marquez Valdes-Scantling, George Pickens, and A.J. Brown – he has been unstoppable.
With his move to the West Coast, Evans switches from a QB in Baker Mayfield who was in 2025 tossing a frugal 6.8 Y/A (26th) to Purdy at 7.6 Y/A (T10th)…and that was Brock at his lowest since joining the NFL as Mr. Irrelevant back in 2022. We have already seen Purdy hit an eye-watering 9.6 Y/A on 444 throws back in 2023; any positive regression back towards this next year will undoubtedly see Evans reap the rewards as the primary beneficiary on deeper balls. Let’s not forget, despite being banged-up and 32 years old, Evans still recorded the eighth highest aDOT of any WR in 2025 at 14.4 yards…that is most certainly not a WR in decline.
TDs
Can I interest you in a player currently being drafted at the back of the fifth round who;
- Has the second most receiving TDs amongst all active WRs with 108.
- Sits 10th in the all-time list at all positions (eighth if we only count wideouts).
- Averages nine TDs a year…10 if we remove last year’s injury-filled campaign.
Nobody does it quite like Mike Evans (well, apart from Davante Adams, who is being drafted one spot ahead of him), and as the de facto WR1 on his new team and on a three-year deal, there is a greater than 0% chance that Evans may just catch up with his fellow 2014 draftee and overtake him in career scores sooner rather than later.
We have discussed Evans’ aDOT and his threat as a downfield target, but in addition to his big-play ability between the numbers, he brings a Red and Ten Zone threat which has produced the third most TDs from inside the 10-yard line over the last three seasons – only Amon-Ra St. Brown and the aforementioned Davante Adams have more.
Sure, CMC may have scored *checks notes* a thousand TDs last season (ok, it was “only” 17 – 7 of those being receiving TDs) – but there were plenty to go around from Brock Purdy; with George Kittle also hauling in seven and the now departed Jauan Jennings totaling nine. Evans feels custom-made to slip into the role vacated by JJ and then some. Mix in that EPA efficiency and Evans’ success rate in contested catches, and we can expect to see a whole load more of these types of plays in Santa Clara this year.
Mike Evans in the end zone!
NYJvsTB on FOX/FOX Onehttps://t.co/HkKw7uXVnt pic.twitter.com/Qh0SbjCLZe
— NFL (@NFL) September 21, 2025
Conclusions
It feels a bit of a cop-out to just write “Mike Evans is good at football,” but Mike Evans is really good at football; you do not put up eleven consecutive 1,000-yard seasons and eight WR1 fantasy performances by pure luck.
There may be some apprehension surrounding just how he fits into his new surroundings, but how quickly the former Buccaneer picks up the playbook is my only concern moving forward. In his last full year (2024), Evans was ranked No.1 by PFF against Man Coverage, with a 76.7% catch rate – you simply do not just lose that overnight.
A fully healthy Mike Evans in this Kyle Shanahan system is a lock for 70+ receptions, 1,000+ yards (obviously), and 8+ TDs…that baseline would have been enough to finish as the overall WR11 in 0.5 PPR scoring in 2025, and is the exact reason The Path to a WR1 Season for Mike Evans is paved with gold.
from Fantasy Footballers Podcast https://ift.tt/PgHGRjf
No comments: