The San Francisco 49ers’ wide receiver play was up and down all season. For the first month of the season, Ricky Pearsall was their clear go-to threat. However, Pearsall’s PCL injury cost him a good chunk of the season, forcing him to battle through injuries, even after returning in the second half.
One player who never had the opportunity to take advantage of Pearsall’s absence from the lineup was rookie wide receiver Jordan Watkins. We all remember Watkins having a strong preseason game, including
a big catch.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan was asked why a player like Watkins, who could have provided some much-needed speed to a receiving core that relied on Jauan Jennings and Kendrick Bourne for much of the season, didn’t get a chance to play. Surprise, surprise, injuries impacted Watkins’ availability in 2025:
Jordan got hurt in his first preseason game with a high ankle sprain, and he needed, he wasn’t ready yet, like 95-percent of guys who come into training camp aren’t. And then you take them through a few preseason games, you take them through an entire training camp and they’ve got a chance to get there for Week 1.
And then they usually realize, ‘oh, I’m not totally quite ready. This is what I’ve got to do and maybe I can get there by Week 5, Week 6.’ When you get hurt right away in training camp and you miss a whole training camp it’s a huge window for guys who aren’t quite ready yet. That was their chance to get ready. And then when you come back, where are you when you come back? If it’s off a high ankle sprain, how’s your conditioning now? Alright, now it takes you three weeks just to get your conditioning back to where you can start to have a chance to improve.
And when that happens, you have a setback, which he did. And so, you kind of miss that window where you had a chance to gain on people. And then where you sit in Week 12, Week 13 behind a group of guys that are more consistent at this time in their career than you are.
And then it just, it becomes unfortunate for those guys. You know, when you have a losing season, you’re totally out of stuff and you just want to give guys chances and that’s all right. But, when you’re trying to compete for one seed, trying to compete just to get in the playoffs, you don’t experiment with that at the expense of the football team.
Watkins saw action at wide receiver in Weeks 8, 9, and 10, albeit limited action. The only other time he saw the field was for eight snaps in Week 16. All in all, Watkins played 25 offensive snaps as a rookie.
It goes without saying that Watkins did not perform up to expectations after the setbacks he had in practice. Whether it’s due to a lack of physicality, not understanding the plays, or not having a good enough grasp on what it takes to be a pro, it’s clear that something was off.
One would think the fourth-round draft pick would be able to play his way onto the field over a Bourne or Malik Turner — two players who weren’t on the roster in Week 1 but were on the field for a two-minute drill in the Wild Card round.
In Week 12, Bourne and Skyy Moore saw snaps on offense. The next week, only Bourne sniffed the field outside of the usual trio of Pearsall, Jennings, and Demarcus Robinson. The fact that Moore played over Watkins is slightly concerning.
Shanahan said it would’ve taken another injury or two at the position for Watkins to play, while acknowledging what he went through during his rookie year could be a good thing for him:
If there were a couple more injuries for these receivers in the last month or so, then Jordan would’ve been up. It wasn’t that he wasn’t capable, it’s that he missed his window to pass some people. And I think that can end up being a good thing for a guy. If they understand why it happens, and they use that from January to March to understand how to come into an offseason to make sure you get ready right away, because you never know when that time’s taken away, where you can’t get ready.
That reads like someone who wasn’t prepared to earn a roster spot. Watkins must learn from his rookie year on the preparation front.
