SANTA CLARA – The scene on the practice field Saturday morning was either heartening or complicated, depending on which way you looked at it. Ricky Pearsall, the receiver San Francisco spent two years waiting to use, was being placed on injured reserve. Deebo Samuel, the receiver San Francisco thought it had moved on from, was lining up in the slot.
General manager John Lynch confirmed on Saturday that Pearsall, the 49ers’ 2024 first-round pick, would require PCL surgery and miss the entire 2026 season. The franchise had signed Samuel back on July 31 on a one-year deal worth up to $7 million after the knee showed signs of giving out in the first days of camp, but the full severity had not been disclosed. Saturday made it official.
Samuel, 30, arrived at the facility looking like a man who had not needed the intervening year to stay ready. He had spent it with the Washington Commanders, collecting 72 catches for 727 yards and five touchdowns. Those are creditable numbers for a veteran receiver, and not what a system built around his particular skill set produces when it has him back. In Shanahan’s offense, Samuel’s short-area quickness and willingness to absorb contact in the alley had once made him the league’s most unusual All-Pro. In Washington, he was a good receiver. In Santa Clara on Saturday, he was back to being something harder to categorize.
He was direct about the offseason. His conversations with Lynch and Shanahan had never really changed in character, he said, noting it was “just a matter of time before it happened.” His summary of the reunion, after the first practice back in red and gold, was that the year away had barely registered: it kind of felt, he said, like he had never gone anywhere at all.
The player he stepped in for did not have an ordinary career to interrupt. Pearsall’s recurring PCL trouble dates to late in the 2025 season. The No. 31 pick in the 2024 draft missed the majority of his rookie year after being shot in the chest during an armed robbery near San Francisco’s Union Square in August 2024. His second season finally gave him room to operate: 36 receptions for 528 yards, a 14.7-yard average that outlined a downfield threat the franchise had genuine reasons to invest in. The PCL gave out late in that campaign. He arrived at 2026 camp having skipped offseason surgery, with the organization cautiously optimistic the joint had held. It had not. Lynch confirmed surgery and season-ending IR on Saturday, per the NFL’s reporting.
The receiver room that received this news was not stable before it arrived. Jauan Jennings, the reliable third option who had become a quiet pillar of Shanahan’s scheme, left for Minnesota in free agency. Brandon Aiyuk, whose four-year, $120 million contract the franchise restructured by removing injury guarantees last spring, is absent from camp, his situation with the 49ers publicly unresolved. Christian Kirk suffered a calf strain in the first days of practice. George Kittle, the tight end through whom the offense organizes itself, is managing his own physical concerns. Sports Illustrated reported that the combination of those losses leaves San Francisco with a receiver depth chart thinner than at any point in recent memory heading into the regular season.
Mike Evans arrived in March to anchor the room. The six-time Pro Bowler signed a three-year, $42.4 million deal with San Francisco and has spent the first week of camp building a connection with quarterback Brock Purdy. Evans, at 33, offers the kind of reliable field-stretching presence that makes coverage decisions predictable for the offense and punishes corner alignment. Samuel, three years younger and constructed differently, adds motion, misdirection, and the manufactured leverage in Shanahan’s pre-snap scheme that a conventional route-runner does not replicate.
Ole Miss wide receiver De’Zhaun Stribling, the No. 33 pick in the 2026 draft, will develop inside this room with more immediate responsibility than anyone projected when the pick was made. Lynch also noted that Samuel would line up on kickoff returns under the league’s dynamic kickoff format, a detail that describes how the coaching staff sees him: a multipurpose veteran in a room that has fewer bodies than it should.
The official IR designation closes Pearsall’s 2026 season before it started. What it leaves open is whether the 49ers have adequately covered the gap his absence creates, not just in practice reps or route trees but in the years of contract control and upside that a first-round pick carries with him. Samuel said Saturday that the return felt inevitable. The next seventeen weeks will have to determine whether inevitable was also enough.
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