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Is 49ers Rookie Wide Receiver Ricky Pearsall a Bust?

In the 49ers' past five games, Pearsall has just 2 catches on 9 targets for a mere 21 yards.

Grant Cohn

Dec 8, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall (14) on the sidelines during the fourth quarter against the Chicago Bears at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Bob Kupbens-Imagn Images
Dec 8, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall (14) on the sidelines during the fourth quarter against the Chicago Bears at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Bob Kupbens-Imagn Images / Bob Kupbens-Imagn Images
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What's the deal with Ricky Pearsall?

The 49ers drafted him in Round 1 this year. And for the past month, they needed him to step up, considering Brandon Aiyuk is out for the season and Deebo Samuel is playing poorly. And yet, in the 49ers' past five games, Pearsall has just 2 catches on 9 targets for a mere 21 yards despite playing a whopping 63 percent of the offensive snaps. Which means he's running lots of routes but not catching many passes.

Keep in mind, Pearsall missed most of training camp with a shoulder subluxation, then he missed the first six games of the season after getting shot in the chest. Next year with a full offseason and no setbacks or near tragedies, he might be much better.

But it's worth remembering that Pearsall was a bit of a controversial draft pick. He wasn't considered a first-round prospect. And he was taken ahead of a few wide receivers who were graded higher than him, one of which was Los Angeles Chargers rookie wide receiver Ladd McConkey, who has 65 catches for 873 yards and 5 touchdowns this season.

Entering the draft, McConkey had more hype than Pearsall. That's because McConkey had been a productive player since his freshman year at Georgia while Pearsall was a late bloomer after transferring from Arizona State to Florida. He also is a year older than McConkey.

In retrospect, the 49ers may have drafted the wrong wide receiver.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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