49ers 

49ers TE George Kittle heaped praise upon veteran WR Mike Evans for his veteran leadership and football IQ during a recent appearance on the New Heights podcast.

“One thing that I was talking to [quarterback Brock] Purdy about a couple of days ago was that this is our first veteran wide receiver since we had Emmanuel Sanders,” Kittle said, via David Bonilla of 49erswebzone.com. “Like, I had Deebo [Samuel]. I had Brandon Aiyuk. But they were both like years one through four—Deebo was like year five. But Mike Evans is a guy, like, just watching him and his savviness—you know the concept; you have coverage in the red zone; one guy has the corner; the other guy has the ‘now’ route underneath it—and the way he sets it up versus a defender with outside leverage and then just gets wide open, and I’m just like, ‘It’s so fun to watch.’”

“Just so savvy,” Kittle added. “Catches everything; runs great routes; gives great effort. I’m all-in on Mike Evans.”

Cardinals

• Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated writes that Cardinals’ third-year CB Max Melton looks poised for a strong year, given he has “pushed himself to another level” this offseason.
• Breer also notes that second-year CB Will Johnson has looked “instinctive and confident” in practice, while second-year CB Denzel Burke showed consistent “feel and assuredness” through OTAs.

Seahawks

When Seahawks nickel DB Nick Emmanwori went down with an ankle injury just before the Super Bowl, Seahawks S Julian Love offered to play nickel in his place if he wasn’t able to go. Seattle HC Mike Macdonald praised “the mayor” Love for his willingness to put the team over himself at every turn. 

“That’s Julian, he’s the Mayor, man,” Macdonald said, via the team’s website. “One of our leaders on our team, and that exemplifies the mentality we’re looking for out of all of our guys. It’s never really a question with Julian, you just assume he’s going to feel that way, and that’s a testament to who he is every day. We’re never trying to take away from his ability to make plays or get him away from the action. We’re always thinking about, ‘How do we get him closer to the action?’ Sometimes, because he is so talented and so versatile, you do have to put him in other situations to round out the 11 and make sure we’re the best 11 out there, but the fact that that’s not an issue just makes us a better team, so that’s just a testament to him.”

Love explained what went into proposing a position change, citing his confidence in his ability to step up and solve their problem, along with his teammates’ ability to backfill his role if he moved to nickel. 

“It’s like, ‘OK, I can do it. No one can do it other than me. If anyone can do it and fix this situation, it’s going to be me,'” Love said. “I don’t outwardly express that, but that’s kind of how I operate internally, I think I have to to be at the level I’m at. It was, OK, Nick’s down, thankfully, Ty Okoda played great ball all season, we had Coby (Bryant), so immediately it’s like, OK, I’m going through scenarios quickly in my mind, OK, what can we do here? If we keep ‘Spoon here, blah, blah blah, then the biggest thing was, ‘We have three really good safeties, let me play what Nick has been doing, and I think we lose less.’ That’s all happening within minutes of him going down… Even right after it happened, I took reps. ‘I was like, don’t put me at safety the rest of practice, let me play Nick’s role.’ It was kind of scary for sure, I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of millions of people, but I knew if I started working on it then, I knew with a couple of days and a couple of reps I’d be fine.”

Love admitted he would prefer to remain in one spot, and he feels their collection of versatile defensive backs will allow him to continue mastering the free safety spot going forward.

“Naturally, I’m always like, ‘Just throw me in at whatever and I’ll pay that role. Cater the defense to where everyone else feels comfortable,'” Love said. “I probably should stop doing that. I probably should be like, ‘This is what I do, this is my role, this is what I’m best at, let me go out and do that.’ I think there’s a sense of that, because we have a lot of versatility—Bud brings a lot to the table, Ty Okada brings a lot to the table, Nick brings everything to the table on defense, so that allows me to kind of be myself, play my role and do what I do best, thankfully.”