Follow up to yesterday's Deebo Samuel item. He wants to be traded, and San Francisco is willing to accommodate him. It might be that they think he's declining, and it also might be that they're happy with their alternatives.
Brandon Aiyuk and Jauan Jennings are under contract for 2025. And they drafted Ricky Pearsall in the first round a year ago. Pearsall's name is most recognizable to the average fan for being shot last preseason, an injury that wound up costing him the first six games of the season, and certainly set back his rookie year development. But he came on down the stretch, to the point where the 49ers probably believe he's ready to do a lot more.
In his final year at Florida, Pearsall put up 1,027 scrimmage yards and 6 total touchdowns. And he put up some nice games with his opportunities a year ago, depending how you look at it.
On the one hand, there were five games last year (Weeks 11-15) where Pearsall played 50-60 percent of the snaps and did very little. He was a 3rd (or 4th, if including George Kittle) in those games, logging respectable field time but catching only 2 passes for 21 yards. Looking at those games, there's not much to see.
But Pearsall officially started four games last year, and in two others he played more than 70 percent of the snaps. Kittle got knocked out of one of those games, while Samuel missed one (Week 18) and was seemingly a decoy (Week 17, playing plenty but seeing just 1 target) in another. Considering just those six games, things look a lot more promising, as shown in the table below.
| PEARSALL OFFICIAL STARTS, PLUS 2 OVER 70% SNAPS | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week | Opp | No | Rec | TD |
| 7 | K.C. | 3 | 21 | 0 |
| 8 | Dal. | 4 | 38 | 0 |
| 10 | at T.B. | 4 | 73 | 1 |
| 16 | at Mia. | 4 | 37 | 0 |
| 17 | Det. | 8 | 141 | 1 |
| 18 | at Ari. | 6 | 69 | 1 |
This is a somewhat selective presentation, I acknowledge. If Pearsall was on the field 50-60 percent of the time and not getting targets, as in those Week 11-15 games, it's a little sketchy to value those below official "starts", where the main difference was that he was on the field for the opening snap. Please do not go out and select Pearsall early in a best-ball draft based strictly on those games; the overall body of work must be considered.
But occurring as those games did when there was a lot more important stuff going on in the NFL, those performances were probably forgotten by many. Not the Niners decision makers, who have signed off on the idea of trading Samuel, but probably many fantasy teams.
Aiyuk and Christian McCaffrey are coming off injury. Kittle is getting up there in years. And Samuel is probably gone. I will be interested in using a later pick on Pearsall this summer.
--Andy Richardson