Ricky Pearsall

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• 2026 PreviewJul 2, 2026

  Ricky Pearsall 2026 Season Preview — what repeats, what doesn't

  NO CALL — WR48 matches the per-game WR46; a touchdown rebound and a crowded new room pull in opposite directions.

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  Show notes & transcript

  Ricky Pearsall gained 528 receiving yards last season and never once scored. Only one player in football had more scoreless yards. The market's response: receiver 48 at pick one-oh-nine — and a locker room that just added Mike Evans and Christian Kirk to the room he was supposed to inherit.

  The season: nine games — a hamstring cost him the middle of the year, and a suspected minor PCL sprain, per CBS Sports, shaded the end of it — with 36 catches on 53 targets for those 528 yards and zero touchdowns. 7.8 Half-PPR points a game, 40-sixth among receivers who played half the season. In his nine games he drew 18.4 percent of San Francisco's targets — a real starter's share on a 12-five wild-card team. And he earned it efficiently: 10 yards per target, which is exactly what makes the zero in the touchdown column so strange.

  Two years in, the per-game line is quietly fine: seven-one as a rookie, seven-eight in year two, both in seasons the injury report kept interrupting. The rookie year was 11 games; year two was nine; the market has never seen 12 months of him. Durability, not talent, is the missing line on the résumé.

  The pattern read: touchdowns are the least repeatable stat we track — year over year they replicate at point-five-two across 954 receiver seasons, far below targets at point-seven-nine. That cuts both ways, and we'll say both: a zero-touchdown season on 528 yards is the kind of outlier that usually corrects, and nothing in the data promises the correction. We price what repeats, and what repeats is his target share — if the room lets it. Target volume is the sticky stat — point-seven-nine year over year — and 18 percent of a Shanahan passing game is a real baseline to regress from.

  About that room. San Francisco lost Jauan Jennings to Minnesota in early May, per NFL.com, and Brandon Aiyuk — who hasn't played since October 20-24 — sits on the reserve list with a release widely expected, per ESPN and Pro Football Rumors. The replacements are not modest: Mike Evans signed from Tampa in March, per ESPN; Christian Kirk arrived in free agency; and the front office spent the first pick of round two on receiver De'Zhaun Stribling in April, per team draft coverage. Kittle's Achilles rehab could tilt early-season targets toward the receivers — or Purdy, healthy again per NBC Sports Bay Area, simply spreads it thinner. Shanahan and Kubiak return. The June beat coverage adds one more name to watch — Jacob Cowing drew offseason-program buzz, per ESPN's Nick Wagoner.

  The price: WR48 at pick one-oh-nine, for the per-game WR46. The market has him exactly where the scoreboard put him. WR48 assumes a flex-week rotation piece — roughly what an 18-percent share delivers when the touchdown luck is average instead of absent. Our verdict: no call. The price and the production match, and the two big unknowns — touchdown correction up, target squeeze down — pull in opposite directions with no pattern to break the tie. The caveat out loud: if Evans and Kirk take the volume, there's nothing left to regress; if the share holds, the touchdowns almost have to show up.

  Watch his first-team snaps in the preseason — outside or slot, with Evans on the field — and his red-zone targets in September. Red-zone volume is the leading indicator of a touchdown correction — the yardage already proved he gets open. He's one of your guys? Every player on your roster gets this treatment — every week, all season.