SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Quarterback Brock Purdy was in the middle of an early March workout at tight end George Kittle 's Nashville, Tennessee, gym when the news landed: The San Francisco 49ers had made a big splash in free agency, signing star receiver Mike Evans to a three-year contract .
As Purdy absorbed the information and looked around, he noted the signed Evans jersey hanging on Kittle's wall. He credited Kittle for his recruiting efforts in bringing Evans, a potential future Hall of Famer, to San Francisco.
"I was like, 'You've got to be kidding me,'" Purdy said. "What he's done in his career, the thousand yards for a season thing, just the quarterbacks that he's played with, for me to be able to now throw to him, it's an honor." A depleted receiver room desperately needed Evans, whose streak of 11 consecutive 1,000-yard receiving seasons ended last year.
But this addition carried more than on-field production. It was a sign the Niners are back into win-now mode one year after undergoing a roster reset .
An unexpected 12-5 season (after missing the playoffs in 2024) might have rekindled the want to make another championship push with an aging but star-laden core. Still, the difficulty of the NFC West division and a lack of proven young stars ready to form the team's next nucleus leave plenty of questions as San Francisco enters training camp.
There are reasons for the Niners to be optimistic. In addition to Evans, the team signed veteran wideout Christian Kirk , traded for defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa and reunited with linebacker Dre Greenlaw .
They also spent many of their picks on more experienced rookies with an average age of more than 23 years old. None of it feels like a coincidence for a team that went from having little idea how last season would play out to nearly claiming the NFC's No.
1 seed in Week 18 and winning a road playoff game 23-19 in Philadelphia. "It says that this group is ready to win, that's what it does," Niners tackle Colton McKivitz said.
"We didn't know last year what this team was going to do. There wasn't a whole lot of playoff talk, Super Bowl talk, whatever it was.
It was just, are you going to get better each week and win each week? When that's eventually what we got, that was a reward for that 12-win season ...
I think we're ahead of the curve." THE NINERS FINISHED the 2024 season 6-11, and it left such a sour taste in the mouth of star tackle Trent Williams that it gave him pause when assessing his future. Williams has long maintained that he'd like to play until he's 40, but that season went south so quickly that Williams wondered whether he would spend his final NFL seasons on a contender.
"That season was, excuse my language, a s--- show," Williams said. The one-season drop from a Super Bowl appearance to the bottom of the NFC West forced the Niners to take a long look at what they could squeeze from their remaining franchise pillars.
As part of that calculus, coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch already understood they'd have to part ways with a significant number of key veterans who had been integral to San Francisco's success. The 49ers said goodbye to 18 players, including nine who signed multiyear deals elsewhere.
Those players signed deals that annually averaged $9.98 million with $161.16 million guaranteed at signing. Their remaining resources went to signing stars Purdy, Kittle and linebacker Fred Warner to top-of-market extensions.
They added 22 players, but only backup tight end Luke Farrell inked a deal for more than two years, and the average salary for those pickups was just $2.41 million with $32.72 million guaranteed at signing. San Francisco used all 11 of its picks in the 2025 NFL draft with 10 earning roster spots last season.
The goal, according to Lynch, was to infuse the roster with some much-needed youth. "Last year was definitely different," Kittle said.
"We had a lot of, I felt like, randomness to it." It prompted Shanahan to host a dinner at his home for the remaining veterans where he emphasized the importance of helping the team's younger players while focusing less on results and more on incremental improvement. It was the first time in years that Shanahan shut down his team openly discussing its Super Bowl aspirations.
Nobody really knew what the roster reset would yield. "I don't think there was a lot of hope for us last year, that's for sure," McKivitz said.
"But I think we rehashed everything, reset our goals as a team, what