{"id":867540,"date":"2026-04-16T06:11:42","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T06:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/867540\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T06:11:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T06:11:42","slug":"49ers-mike-evans-taking-no-5-not-brock-purdys-no-13-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/867540\/","title":{"rendered":"49ers’ Mike Evans taking No. 5, not Brock Purdy’s No. 13"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wide receiver Mike Evans says<\/a> he will wear No. 5 upon joining the 49ers this season, for those wondering if he\u2019d try poaching No. 13 from his quarterback, Brock Purdy.<\/p>\n

Evans wore No. 13<\/a> in becoming the Tampa Bay Buccaneers\u2019 all-time leading receiver<\/a> over the previous 12 seasons.<\/p>\n

So why is he saying hi to No. 5?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s my high school football number, my Little League number, my middle school number,\u201d Evans told 49ers linebacker Fred Warner on the \u201cReal Ones: The League\u201d podcast episode that came out Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cOK, that\u2019s clean. Ol\u2019 Mike Evans in the cinco,\u201d Warner replied.<\/p>\n

Evans was the 49ers\u2019 prized acquisition in last month\u2019s start of free agency, signing him to a three-year deal that essentially is a one-year, $16 million guaranteed pact.<\/p>\n

The No. 5 has rotated in recent years from quarterback Trey Lance (2021-22) to defensive end Randy Gregory (2023), quarterback Joshua Dobbs (2024) and wide receiver Demarcus Robinson (2025). Most famously, quarterback Jeff Garcia donned No. 5 in his 1999-2003 tenure.<\/p>\n

The 49ers have yet to formally announce which numbers have been assigned to Evans or their other 12 newcomers ahead of next week\u2019s NFL Draft.<\/p>\n

The 49ers open their offseason program next Monday. Evans told Warner he plans to attend at least \u201cpart\u201d of the organized team activities in May.<\/p>\n

Their season opener is Sept. 10 in Melbourne, Australia<\/a> (10:35 a.m. Sept. 11 locally), and that long trip caught Evans\u2019 attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s crazy, man. That\u2019s one thing when I was looking at teams and saw your schedule as the most traveled team. I don\u2019t like flying like that,\u201d Evans told Warner. \u201cBut at the end of the day, we\u2019ll fly there and we\u2019ve got to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Running back Christian McCaffrey is \u201cfired up\u201d to be playing with Evans.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s somebody that, if you\u2019re a fan of football, you\u2019ve watched his entire career, and it\u2019s hard not to like the guy,\u201d McCaffrey said Tuesday on NFL Network<\/a>. \u201cHe\u2019s a first-ballot Hall of Famer. He\u2019s somebody that, in my opinion, has never gotten enough credit, and I think he plays that way. He plays with a chip on his shoulder.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wide receiver Mike Evans says he will wear No. 5 upon joining the 49ers this season, for those…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":867477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2075],"tags":[235,260,2567,7,6,236,252,9],"class_list":{"0":"post-867540","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-panthers","8":"tag-carolina","9":"tag-carolina-panthers","10":"tag-carolinapanthers","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-panthers","14":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","15":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116412908378516029","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=867540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/867477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}