Ricky Pearsall is the latest 49ers player to go down with an injury

The hits just won't stop.

San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall (1). | Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images

SANTA CLARA -- The 49ers' wide receiver corps just got thinner.

They already don't have Brandon Aiyuk, plus Jauan Jennings missed Sunday's win over the Cardinals with an ankle injury. Now, Ricky Pearsall is day-to-day with a knee injury that kept him out of Wednesday's practice completely. Meaning he didn't do anything, not even warm up.

Sometimes when players are have injuries that aren't serious, they're limited participants in practice, which means they warm up with their position groups and practice certain techniques. In a wide receiver's case, he would practice running routes and catching passes. Then, he would skip the 11-on-11 team drills, because those are competitive and can lead to further injury.

Before practice on Wednesday, I approached Pearsall at his locker and asked him how his knee feels and when he injured it.

Ricky Pearsall discusses his knee injury. pic.twitter.com/yv5hTBIpJd

— Grant Cohn (@grantcohn) September 24, 2025

"It's feeling good," Pearsall said. "I actually don't even know when I hurt my knee. I felt a little bit of soreness after the game, and it wasn't until later on in the night when I was moving around that I felt a little soreness, nothing that I was really concerned about.

"Came in the next day and was talking to the trainers and I told them the same thing I'm telling you right now. I'm not really concerned -- I just want to check it out a little bit. That's kind of what I'm doing with it. It's just a little bit of soreness and I'm not worried about it. If there was a game today, I would play."

Parsing Pearsall's words

It sounds like Pearsall sincerely expects to play this weekend. But it's hard to put much stock into anything a player or coach says about an injury. It's not their job to be transparent, and giving away too much information can help the opponent.

It's noteworthy that he says he's not "really worried" about his knee, but he wants to get it checked out. Sounds like he's at least slightly worried. If everything checks out and the soreness gets better, he almost certainly will play, but it's unclear how effective he'll be and how much the 49ers will feature him in their offense.

Fortunately for the 49ers, veteran wide receiver Demarcus Robinson will make his 49ers debut this Sunday after missing the first three games due to a suspension. In addition, Brock Purdy seems to be on track to return from a turf toe injury that kept him out of the past two games.

We'll see which receivers he'll actually get to play with.