The San Francisco 49ers have one of the best offenses in football. Typically, we want players on good offenses in fantasy football. The problem with the 49ers is they have too many great players. Rookie WR Ricky Pearsall appears to have the talent to make an impact, but will the opportunity be there? Let’s see what his projection says.
Ricky Pearsall’s 2024 Fantasy Outlook
- Fantasy points per game: 7.7
- Receptions: 43
- Receiving Yards: 651
- Receiving TDs: 3.6
These are PFN’s consensus projections, correct as of August 14. The most up-to-date projections can be found in our Who Should I Draft Tool.
Should You Draft Pearsall This Year?
How good is Pearsall? He wasn’t an impactful college wide receiver until his junior year. He didn’t have a truly impressive season until his fifth season, when he caught 65 passes for 965 yards and four touchdowns. Yet, the 49ers thought highly enough of Pearsall to make him the sixth wide receiver off the board in the 2024 NFL Draft.
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First-round draft capital goes a long way. There’s definitely an upside here. In 2025, Pearsall projects to be this team’s starting WR2, opposite whichever one of Deebo Samuel Sr. or Brandon Aiyuk is still on the team. But that doesn’t help fantasy managers in 2024.
The 49ers are bringing back their entire core offense from last year’s Super Bowl run. They will continue to run things through Christian McCaffrey. Aiyuk remains the WR1. Samuel is their WR2/gadget guy. George Kittle remains an elite tight end in all phases of the game.
A whopping 74.7% of the 49ers’ pass attempts went to one of their four main players last season. In reality, the percentage was even higher as Aiyuk, Kittle, and McCaffrey all missed one game, while Samuel missed two and left two more early.
Even in a truly impossible scenario where Pearsall can command a 20% target share, that is still not enough to make him fantasy relevant. As the team’s WR3, at best, I have him projected for a 9.3% target share. The only way I see him doubling that, which is what it would take for him to have a chance, is an injury to Aiyuk or Samuel … or for Aiyuk to get traded.
We’ve seen high-octane offenses produce several impact fantasy assets. The reason the 49ers can’t do it is because of the lack of passing volume.
Brock Purdy is one of the most efficient QBs of all time through his first two seasons. It’s what’s kept their three main pass catchers afloat. Typically, volume is king. And there’s none of it in a 49ers offense that averaged just 28.2 pass attempts per game.
The 49ers play at the slowest pace in the league by far. Their 46% neutral-game-script run rate is 11th in the league. They experience positive game scripts often, reducing their need to air it out.
If Kyle Shanahan committed to playing fast and Purdy throws 600 times, this offense is absolutely capable of supporting three fantasy-relevant wide receivers plus Kittle and McCaffrey. But that’s not going to happen.
My projection for Pearsall puts him at WR80, averaging just 4.74 fantasy points per game (ppg). The PFN consensus is far more optimistic about his role. Yet, even at 7.7 ppg, he’s not close to fantasy relevance.
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With a WR68 ADP, Pearsall is getting drafted in most leagues. I imagine the plan for fantasy managers is to sit on him for as long as possible and see if something happens to one of the WRs in front of him.
I have Pearsall ranked as my WR58. While the most likely outcome is he doesn’t matter at all this year, there is a path to relevance. No one is drafting Pearsall because he’s the 49ers’ WR3. We’re drafting him because he’s an injury (or a surprise Brandon Aiyuk trade) away from being the WR2.
