What History Says About Ricky Pearsall's Future With the 49ers

This is concerning.

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Ricky Pearsall has had a slower start to his career than he would have liked. Pearsall has 928 yards for the San Francisco 49ers through two NFL seasons. Injuries have had something to do with it, but he does have 13 starts, and now that it is two seasons, the trend is hard to ignore.

Is there still hope for Ricky Pearsall with San Francisco 49ers

Since 2010, there had been 62 receivers drafted in the first and second rounds of the NFL draft to fail to hit 1,200 yards in their first two years combined. Of those, only 10 went on to sign legitimate contract extensions, with nine of them being on the team that drafted them.

Davante Adams, Tyler Boyd, Mike Williams, Deebo Samuel, Rashod Bateman, Alec Pierce, Christian Watson, Wan’Dale Robinson, Jameson Williams, and Quentin Johnston are the best hits and only Robinson did not extend with the team that drafted him. However, he re-signed with Brian Daboll, who did coach him. Still, that means that 16% of the sample end up having fine careers while the other 84% never quite live up to expectations.

Pearsall is starting to get closer to being lumped in with names like Jonathan Mingo, Kadarius Toney, Elijah Moore and Jalen Reagor. 

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Because Pearsall was not completely unproductive it is unfair to compare him to some complete draft duds. If you refine the list and look at receivers with over 700 yards but under 1,100 yards, it looks closer into the sample that Pearsall is in. This is still 25 players, and seven of those same players are in the list. That does increase his chances of being one of those players up to 28%, though. 

Looking at draft status, the players picked closest to Pearsall are Phillip Dorsett, Justin Hunter, Moore, Bateman and Watson. Watson and Bateman were fine hits, but the other three did not end up playing well in the NFL. 

The only issue comparing Pearsall to those five is that he was older than all of them at the time. Pearsall is already 25 years old. The only other receivers to produce similarly to Pearsall in their first two years despite entering the NFL much older and being drafted higher were Anthony Miller and Van Jefferson. 

Miller has mostly spent his career on practice squads after getting a few chances and Jefferson is someone who fills out the depth as a veteran. Overall, there are some reasons to be optimistic on Pearsall, but past history has not shown a lot of players with his start end up with success.