Mike Evans tightness and the 49ers injury woes that wont go away

Uh oh.There’s that dreaded word again.Tightness.The mysterious and seemingly contagious condition that has also kept Christian McCaffrey out of San Francisco 49ers training camp cropped up again Tuesday involving another star player.Mike Evans.The veteran receiver who already missed a chunk of practices couldn’t make it to the end of Tuesday’s joint session at the Los Angeles Chargers’ facility in El Segundo.Although Evans began the practice catching warm-up passes from Brock Purdy, he left midway through and watched the remainder from the sideline with an ice pack on his left quad.The same quad that forced the 32-year-old free-agent signee to miss two weeks after straining it earlier in camp, an absence he returned from only two practices prior. The issue?“Some tightness,” head coach Kyle Shanahan said. Sound familiar?Shanahan has used the same vague terminology to describe the ailment that has so far kept McCaffrey sidelined.In Evans’ case, at least we know which body part isn’t feeling right.Not that it’s any reassurance for a receiver going into his 13th season to have an injury reappear after he felt like he had put it behind him enough to return to practice.And Evans was moving well, like the 6-foot-5 specimen has over the course of a remarkably productive — and durable — career.

Evans played all but six of a possible 163 games over his first 10 seasons in the NFL.But the past two years? He’s missed 12 out of 34.The aging curve is undefeated.

You don’t have to tell the 49ers.The rash of injuries probably has less to do with the wrath of the substation adjacent to their practice field than the number of key contributors on their roster who are on the wrong side of 30.Count among them: tight end George Kittle, 32, recovering from a torn Achilles, and fullback Kyle Juszczyk, 35, out with a fractured finger.At the tail end of an illustrious career, Evans wasn’t brought in to be a true No.

1 target for Purdy.But his role has taken ...