With trade rumors surrounding both Brandon Aiyuk and Deebo Samuel, the 49ers picked Florida WR Ricky Pearsall with the 31st overall pick. It feels like we’re waiting for another shoe to drop here, and Pearsall could very well enter the 2024 season as Brock Purdy‘s WR2. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see, but let’s dig into the fantasy implications of this pick in the meantime.
RICKY PEARSALL
Projection: 27.7 catches on 46.1 targets for 366.9 yards and 2.4 TDs
- Pearsall is an older prospect who turns 24 around the start of the NFL season. He played five years in college, transferring to Florida after a few years at Arizona State (including playing with Aiyuk at ASU). It was only in his fifth season that he really exploded with a 31% market share of receiving yards. That combination of advanced age and late production typically doesn’t bode well for NFL success, but there are things to like about Pearsall’s profile. First of all, he’s hyper-athletic with a 4.41-second 40-yard dash and elite jumping numbers. He’s regarded as a smooth route-runner who gets open with ease. Both Aiyuk (in the form of a text message to 49ers GM John Lynch) and C.J. Stroud expressed that they view Pearsall as an elite WR prospect. He was also an efficient punt returner at Florida and was used a lot in the running game, demonstrating the coaches’ desire to get him the ball however possible. Despite the positives, the inability to post big numbers until his fifth collegiate season is a major red flag on his profile.
- Pearsall is a difficult projection right now. We have to project both Aiyuk and Deebo on the 49ers, and this target tree is heavily concentrated around those two, George Kittle, and Christian McCaffrey. As the roster stands right now, there simply isn’t room for a lot of Pearsall targets. However, we realize there’s a solid chance one of Aiyuk/Deebo aren’t on the roster come Week 1, so we are juicing Pearsall’s ceiling case to make up for it.
- Assuming SF trades a WR, you can easily sell yourself on the hyper-athletic, Round 1 pick Pearsall as a viable fantasy option in the league’s most efficient aerial attack. The targets would still be heavily concentrated around whichever WR remains, Kittle, and CMC, but there would still be room for a mid-teens target share for Pearsall. We’ve seen SF disregard draft capital before and roll with whoever Kyle Shanahan thinks is best, so Pearsall will have to earn the WR2 job, but the investment they just made in him would give him every opportunity to do so.
OTHER 49ERS PASS-CATCHERS
- As mentioned above, we don’t know where Aiyuk or Deebo will play in 2024. If they remain on SF, Pearsall shouldn’t infringe too much on their statuses as co-WR1s on the depth chart. If one of them is gone, it means the other’s target share has the potential to go to the moon, along with Kittle.
- This selection likely renders Jauan Jennings irrelevant, at least until San Francisco trades Deebo or Aiyuk. SF also has younger ancillary guys like Ronnie Bell and Danny Gray who weren’t fantasy-relevant but have shown flashes (at least in Bell’s case; Gray hasn’t really played in the regular season), but they are end-of-bench players.
