Leap to Elite: Ricky Pearsall's Health History Is Hiding a Potential WR1

It’s the time of Draft prep season where I begin to identify breakouts, potential busts, and my personal favorite “Leap to Elite” candidates. These are players who aren’t obscure in any way, and in some cases have already been fantasy contributors. But now, they are ready to leap into the realm of the elites of their position. We’ll begin this series with a player I was bullish on last season, who showed glimpses of this ceiling before injuries took a wrecking ball to his campaign. That man is 49ers WR Ricky Pearsall.

Pearsall had some buzz as a rookie before getting shot in the chest derailed his rookie training camp. He wound up behind schedule in a 49ers offense that isn’t the easiest to pick up, and his rookie season was mostly a waste before some flashes late in the year. As a second-year man, I had highlighted him as a draft value in the 49ers team preview. I was looking like Nostradamus at the outset of 2025, as he began the year with a four-catch, 108-yard performance against the Seahawks, and then caught eight passes for 117 yards in Week 3 vs. the Cardinals. Through three weeks, he was leading the league in receiving before an injury cut his Week 4 short, and kept him out of action until Week 11. From there, he wasn’t the same player, the 49ers offense had changed dramatically and we wound up with another mostly lost season. But hey, that’s why we peek under the hood and scrounge for value. If you can get past the awful stats and trust that good players in good offenses will produce there’s gold with Pearsall.

Per Reception Perception, he cleared 70% vs. man coverage, placing him in the 67th percentile, and he was elite vs. press (77.3% success rate, 83rd percentile). He wasn’t amazing vs. zone, but he was good enough at nearly 80%, and his route success rates showed a player who could consistently separate at all three levels. Pearsall was also playing a lot of X receiver in 2025 due to Brandon Aiyuk’s absence, and now he’ll be playing alongside Mike Evans, who will assume X receiver duties and free up Pearsall to vacillate between flanker and slot most of the time. Those are better places for him, as shown by his best success coming on dig routes (78.5%), slants (87%) and posts (78.6%). Pearsall was drafted with many viewing him as a likely slot option, and he can thrive for sure, but he’s much more than that.

With health, Pearsall is headed for a major target share. Last season the depleted offense was led in targets by RB Christian McCaffery (129). CMC is a phenomenal receiver out of the backfield, but your RB should never, ever lead the team in targets, let alone be the only player with more than 100 of them. Jauan Jennings was next with 90 targets, and he’s gone as of this writing. Evans is arriving, but his targets are different than Pearsall’s will be, and he’s never been a true target hound like Pearsall can be. TE George Kittle is coming back from serious injury, and the coaches have discussed easing the workload on CMC’s body. Pearsall is the best bet to lead the 49ers in targets, which means fantasy managers will feast considering how often he’s open. Looking at ADP now is a fool’s errand because so much will change between now and when you draft, but these early looks can give us a bit of a ballpark. Last season at the time of the 49ers team preview, Pearsall was the WR45 off the board at No. 102 overall. As I write this, he’s at No. 109 overall as the WR47. His perception is unchanged – with valid reason as he hasn’t shown the ability to stay on the field – but that’s huge value because his talent far exceeds the names he’s around such as Wan’Dale Robinson and Quentin Johnston. Players like Pearsall can offer insane depth for teams, and allow them to deal bigger names on their roster to fill holes while not losing anything production wise at the position. If his ADP is anywhere near this when I begin writing team previews, I can guarantee he’ll have stars by his name again.