49ers Offseason Checklist: Most of It Is Out of Their Hands

San Francisco made some moves. They added Mike Evans to shore up the receiving corps, locked in punter Jack Bouwmeester on a three-year deal, and cut loose Zach Thomas, a Reserve/Future lineman who didn't survive the pre-camp trim. Routine stuff, mostly. The Evans signing is the one that matters — a veteran receiver with a long track record of production arriving to fill a corps that needed the help.

The noise is coming from Brandon Aiyuk, who has publicly pushed for a trade to Washington and blamed his former agent for the breakdown in talks with the front office. Whether that ends in a deal or an awkward reconciliation, it's a distraction the team doesn't need heading into camp. Losing him would thin out the pass-catching options considerably.

The bigger questions, though, are medical. George Kittle tore his Achilles last season and his availability for 2026 is still unresolved — the 665-pound deadlift in July is an encouraging sign, but encouraging signs aren't practice reps. Nick Bosa and Mac Jones are both listed as questionable. That's a lot of uncertainty at the edges of a roster that went 12–5 last year and then got blown out in Seattle by 35 points in the wild card. The regular season record was real; so was the playoff result.

The 49ers won five of six close games in 2025. That's a hard thing to sustain, and they'll need to be closer to whole to have a chance at repeating it. Right now, the offseason checklist has more open boxes than closed ones.