The San Francisco 49ers made a major decision this offseason, signing Mike Evans away from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on a three-year, $42.5 million contract with only $16.3 million guaranteed.
On paper, this is a very good signing. Adding a player who has 13,052 receiving yards and 108 touchdowns in his career, and can still be a good WR, is a good signing, especially at this reasonable cost.
However, according to ESPN's Bill Barnwell, a study on free-agent signings from 2013 through 2022 suggests that history isn't on the 49ers' side when it comes to the Evans signing working out for San Francisco.
History isn't on 49ers' side with Mike Evans signing
According to Barnwell's analysis, in this 10-year free agent window, there was a success rate of just 30.4% for free agent wide receiver signings.
That mark was the second-worst success rate of any position in this study from Barnwell, only behind running backs at a brutal 10.0% success rate.
Barnwell's study graded free agents on a 0-6 grade scale, with a "2" being a "Mildly disappointing" signing, and a "1" being a "Very disappointing" signing.
In this study, wide receivers ended up with a 1.99 grade in this 10-year sample size, being the average wide receiver free agent addition being slightly worse than a "Mildly disappointing" signing.
More: 49ers sign Mike Evans away from Buccaneers after 12 years
Another way to look at this study from Barnwell is that any wide receiver signing has a roughly 70% chance of not working out.
Evans could still be a great addition for the 49ers, but history isn't on the 49ers' side. That doesn't mean the 49ers should not have done this deal.
Because of how cheap Evans was, just $16.3 million guaranteed on a reasonable $42.5 million deal, this signing was still the right move for the 49ers.
Barnwell's study doesn't bode well for this signing working out, but there's still 30.4% of WR signings that work out.
Of the WR free agents to sign this offseason, Evans' addition to the 49ers offense being a successful one would not be a surprise whatsoever, despite history not being on their side.
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