Mike Evans Carted Off With Rib Injury After Budda Baker Hit

Mike Evans plays for the San Francisco 49ers now, and Sunday was a reminder of how quickly that experiment can go sideways. Evans was carted off the field at Levi’s Stadium in the second quarter against Arizona after taking a brutal shot to the ribs from Cardinals safety Budda Baker, and he did not return.

To clear up the confusion floating around: Evans is a 49er, not a Buccaneer, after signing a three-year deal with San Francisco this offseason. Baker is still in Arizona, where he has spent his entire career. This was a division game, Cardinals at 49ers, and San Francisco won it 36-30 to move to 3-0.

The hit

Evans caught a short pass over the middle from Brock Purdy and turned upfield. Baker arrived almost immediately and drove his shoulder into Evans’ left side. It was a clean, violent, textbook safety hit, the kind Baker has built a six-time Pro Bowl career on.

Evans stayed on his feet and even played one more snap, which tells you everything about his pain tolerance and nothing good about his ribs. He then dropped to a knee on the turf and was carted off with under two minutes to go in the half. He was ruled out with a rib injury.

San Francisco cannot absorb this

Evans had three catches for 34 yards and a 23-yard touchdown before he left, and he had already become the 49ers’ most reliable target. That is partly because the depth chart behind him has been gutted. Ricky Pearsall, Demarcus Robinson and De’Zhaun Stribling were all already unavailable.

Then left tackle Trent Williams, who is 38, walked off in the third quarter with a stinger. San Francisco is 3-0 and the training room looks like a Week 12 problem in Week 3.

This is also the second straight week Evans has left a game. He exited Week 2 with a hip issue, was questionable all week, practiced once, and was cleared to play Sunday. Through three weeks he has nine catches for 103 yards and a touchdown across his first two games plus Sunday’s brief appearance.

The bigger worry for Evans

Evans is 33 and coming off the worst availability stretch of his career. He played eight games for Tampa Bay in 2025 while dealing with hamstring and clavicle injuries, and the whole premise of the 49ers signing him was that a clean season would still produce a high-end No. 1 receiver.

Rib injuries are miserable for receivers specifically. There is no brace that makes going across the middle comfortable, and there is no rehab shortcut. San Francisco should not rush this, particularly with Denver next on the schedule and a division lead already banked.

Nobody should be blaming Baker here. He hit a receiver who had just caught the ball, in the strike zone, at full speed. That is the job. The problem is that Evans has now taken two of those in two weeks, and his body is no longer built to shrug them off the way it did five years ago.

What comes next

Expect the 49ers to get imaging and be deliberate. Sitting Evans for a week against the Broncos would be the smart play, even at 3-0, because the version of this team that matters in January needs a healthy version of him.

San Francisco survived Sunday. Arizona made it close late, the Cardinals fell to 1-2, and the 49ers escaped with the win. The scoreboard says everything went fine. The injury report says otherwise.