00:00Dajon Stribling's never played an NFL game in his life, and Mike Evans has never played a game for the
00:0549ers.
00:06But in terms of, here's where I will say it is, at minimum, the most interesting, potentially receiving core that
00:16Kyle Shanahan has ever had with the 49ers.
00:19I think it's because of their characteristics, not just, oh, I like those guys better than those guys.
00:26If you think about it more from an X's and O's standpoint, the 49ers have had a really hard time
00:34through the years having a true, as they call it, X receiver.
00:40I mean, Bucky Brooks joined us yesterday.
00:42Every time he comes on, he references how hard we were on him when years ago, and this was the
00:50Super Bowl year,
00:51he made the comment that the 49er receivers are not man beaters.
00:58He made that comment, and he stands by it, and I'm not going to sit here now and say that
01:03he was necessarily right.
01:05But for everybody out there that talks about the schematics of the Kyle Shanahan system, there is something to be
01:12said here.
01:13They've had a very hard time, and it's been very rare through the years that they've had a true X
01:19receiver who can just go out there on an island and beat man coverage in the secondary.
01:27They have that now.
01:29That's Mike Evans.
01:31They signed Mike Evans because Seahawks.
01:34It's the way I view it.
01:36That's why they went out there on the first day of free agency and did that, because they viewed that
01:42that secondary, which was not challenged by last year's team,
01:48that allowed them to totally focus on Christian McCaffrey, and the 49er offense could not move against them in two
01:54games late in the season.
01:56Flat out couldn't move.
01:57Well, now you have that X receiver, and a better one than Brandon Ayuk was three years ago.
02:03Stribling is a rookie, but he has the characteristics of being able to do what Jawan Jennings used to do.
02:12They called it the big slot, but he's able to do it with speed that's a half a second better
02:19than Jawan Jennings.
02:20I don't know if it's going to work out, but again, these characteristics, and then you bring in Debo.
02:26You bring back Debo, who's motivated and skinnier, and if you can use him all over the field,
02:33backfield, slot, all of the things that Debo used to do, I'm just seeing a group that's a lot more,
02:40on paper, diverse
02:42than anything Kyle has had before with the Niners.
02:45That's the way I would assess it.
02:46And that makes a lot of sense, and I think Greg Cosell has said mostly the same stuff,
02:50and you got Ricky Pearsall to be that man-beater, and when he's been healthy,
02:54he's shown that he can be the man-beater.
02:57And the other piece of it, Mark, is when you look at the 49ers under Kyle Shanahan,
03:02Christian McCaffrey in the slot is a great man-beater, even out of the backfield.
03:06And same thing with George Kittle.
03:07And you go back to that Seattle game, Kittle got hurt against Philadelphia.
03:11He wasn't there, and so defensively, all they had to do really was worry about Christian McCaffrey,
03:16and they returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown.
03:19And Shanahan does not do very well historically when his team trails,
03:24let alone when they trail at halftime.
03:26So the Seattle game was a perfect storm of a number of different things.
03:29I still don't believe that they would have won the game
03:32if they didn't allow the opening kick to be returned for a touchdown.
03:35Seattle was better, but that game got away from them in so many different ways.
03:40The injuries caught up, and you fell behind and all the rest of it.
03:43And so you look at this year, and I do think that by the time they got to free agency,
03:48they had already some concerns about Ricky Pearsall,
03:51and when you got to the draft, you had those same concerns.
03:54And so you got in a free agent who's a Hall of Famer, Mike Evans,
03:58and you drafted a guy who you really love and who a lot of teams actually turns out they love
04:03him as well.
04:04Apologies to the consensus draft people who didn't love him until after the fact.
04:09And so, yeah, you're looking at a different group.
04:11You lose Juwan, and you bring in Stripling, who is a big, tough guy who can go deep.
04:16He can also go over the middle.
04:18Mike Evans, you mentioned a boundary X.
04:20You bring back Debo, who, if fit and in shape, and it seems like all the people who are down
04:26there say that he is,
04:27he can be that wide back again, and then you can sprinkle in Robinson and Kirk and the other guys
04:32you have in the room.
04:33Yeah, you have other credible receivers.
04:35There's credibility behind those guys.
04:38And then there's also still other intriguing young guys.
04:41I mean, I'm not done with Jordan Watkins and Jacob Cowling.
04:44I know that they've had bumps in the road with injuries early in their career.
04:48Here's how I would put it if somebody got into this conversation with you.
04:52You don't have a lot of ammo yet to say this is the best receiving core for Kyle Shanahan as
05:00the Niner head coach.
05:01You just don't have the ammo yet.
05:03Mike's got to stay healthy, and Stripling has got to actually do all of the things that he's threatening to
05:08do when the red lights come on.
05:09So if that happens, okay, then you're going to have ammo.
05:13Until then, I would just phrase it differently.
05:17I think this is about as excited as I've been about a receiving core in a long time with the
05:2549ers.
05:27You know, I mean, the IU season in 2023, I'm not going to say it came out of nowhere.
05:31I don't think anybody foresaw it being 1,300 yards and being second in the league with yards per catch
05:36and all of those things that he was that year.
05:39But that was a good core, and it had already been together, so it had some continuity,
05:44and everybody really understood their roles.
05:46So I like that one.
05:49And so maybe I'm feeling what I'm feeling because it's been three or four years of just seemingly everything that
05:56could go wrong goes wrong.
05:58The receivers were always getting hurt.
06:00Multiple receivers went into contract holdout situations.
06:04The IU drama takes over.
06:06Debo had a lightweight series of dramatic events himself.
06:10All of that.
06:11And now, within two weeks, you're picking up people off the street.
06:17Kendrick Bourne and Marquez Valdez-Stantling are running around out there.
06:21So we're wounded with regard to the room, and that has a lot to do with why I feel the
06:28way I do right now.
06:29But this group has me excited.
06:33I don't know if it's going to work out, but I'm very, very intrigued to see what they do.
06:38I'm intrigued to see how Kyle Shanahan uses them because we talked about, you know, that group in 2023,
06:44which was looking at the numbers and remembering it.
06:47It was mainly just IU and Debo.
06:50IU, 75 catches.
06:51Debo had 60.
06:53Jawan, 19.
06:54Ray Ray McLeod had a dozen.
06:56So it was really Debo and IU, and of course, it was McCaffrey and Kittle, and that was your passing
07:01attack.
07:02It was two receivers, a tight end, and your do-everything CMC running back, and that was your offense.
07:07And this year, you could rightly look at it and say, all right, Evans, maybe 70 catches.
07:13Stribbling, we'll give you 60.
07:14Debo, we'll give you 45.
07:16Robinson, how about 35?
07:18And so you can look at a certain amount of a committee based on health and availability,
07:23and some of that could take the pressure off Christian McCaffrey, who's coming off of a 400-touch season,
07:29and everyone wants to try to bring that back a little.
07:32And you've got George Kittle, who's coming off an Achilles.
07:35Will he play 17 games?
07:37Probably not.
07:38Will he play 12 or 14?
07:40I think that 14, 15, whatever it is.
07:43I mean, fingers crossed, yeah.
07:44It feels to me like this offense is going to have to be seven or eight guys as opposed to
07:49that year you talked about,
07:51which was just four guys.
07:52Yeah, 888-957-9570.
07:54We're wide open in the 5 o'clock hour for your calls if you want to get in on the
07:5849er conversation
07:59and your excitement level or otherwise for this particular wide receiver crew.
08:05There's one other thing I want to bring up to on this conversation, though,
08:08when you talk about how, for example, the completions last year,
08:13very, very low number went to wide receivers, 40% or so.
08:17This is where I'm going to run the risk of upsetting some people because he was awesome last year.
08:23He was awesome.
08:25But it is important to note if you're going to trumpet a stat like that,
08:31that half the year was quarterbacked by a backup.
08:35I think it's important to bring that up.
08:38I don't know the metrics maybe you do with regard to wide receiver catches when it was Mack versus when
08:46it was Purdy.
08:47I don't know if it was that different.
08:49I also know that for a portion of the time that Purdy was in there last year, he was also
08:54compromised.
08:56And therefore, there were games where I saw maybe for both quarterbacks, the idea was kind of like,
09:03let's get the ball out of our hands early.
09:05And that does not lend itself to wide receivers.
09:09But I think the number is going to go absolutely through the roof this year if the Niners are blessed
09:15with just a little bit of health.
09:17If they could get 16 or 17 games out of Brock Purdy, and if they can get 15 games out
09:23of Mike Evans,
09:24and if Dejan Stribling is what he's crocked up to be, and Debo and DeMarcus stay relatively healthy,
09:31I think that number is going to skyrocket, and I think that number will be north of 50%.
09:36It normally is in that 45% to 50% range just throughout the Kyle Shanahan era.
09:43And I think that last year was a little bit different, not only because you didn't have Brock Purdy,
09:47but also you had McCaffrey who had 102 catches on the year.
09:52And so your best option offensively almost all year was not run the ball with McCaffrey.
09:58In fact, you were actually not very good at running it at all.
10:01You mentioned the receivers where you didn't have Iyuk, and Ricky Pearsall got hurt fairly early in the year.
10:08And so you had tight ends, you had Juszczyk, you had McCaffrey, and then you had Bourne and Sky Moore
10:14and Juwan Jennings.
10:16And so last year was a little bit of a reverse kind of a year offensively.
10:20And so, yeah, if you do get Mike Evans at normal health 14 or 15 games, and you've got Robinson
10:25for the full year.
10:26Remember, he missed three games last year, right, due to suspension.
10:29I think it was three off the top.
10:31I think so.
10:31And so he actually didn't hit the ground running as you would hope he would.
10:36And now you've got Stribbling, who looks good in camp so far.
10:39I do think that coming into week one, you've got a better chance than you did last year,
10:44where you didn't have Robinson and you kind of were behind the eight ball a little bit.
10:48You know who really likes Purdy?
10:51Harbaugh.
10:53Harbaugh?
10:53Yeah.
10:53Not Harbaugh.
10:54No, no, no, yeah.
10:55Harbaugh.
10:56Did you catch this one today?
10:57Missed it.
10:58This is Jim Harbaugh.
11:00When he was asked about Brock Purdy.
11:03Listen to the way that he chose to answer this one.
11:05Yeah, just how good he is.
11:07His timing, his decision making, his accuracy.
11:10I just like how cool he is, you know, how cool he plays and all that, you know.
11:16Same, same, kind of the same way I think of Kyle, you know.
11:18I mean, it's cool.
11:20A lot of the stuff he puts on tape.
11:21I love, uh, love his demeanor.
11:23Love how he, love the toughness of his teams.
11:27You know, I love that they're really good at football.
11:29And, uh, you know, great, great to be around him.
11:32Almost sounds like he starts to whisper a little bit.
11:34Like, he's, uh, yeah.
11:36They're cool.
11:37Yeah.
11:37Brock Purdy.
11:38He's getting excited, is what you're saying.
11:40Kyle Shanahan.
11:41Yeah, I mean, he likes the toughness that the team plays with.
11:44Mm-hmm.
11:45And stuff.
Comments