No position has been more volatile over the past couple of years for the San Francisco 49ers than wide receiver.
Oddly enough, from 2019-2024, the position was maybe the sturdiest of all position groups, with some variation of Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk, and Jauan Jennings leading. But now, just two years removed from that, the 49ers have a completely new receiving corps, with only Samuel left, but after a quick departure for a cup of coffee (one bound to make Aiyuk jealous) with Washington.
With
so much change at the position over the last two seasons, there’s bound to be plenty of questions. Let’s ask just three of those questions today:
Can the position group stay healthy?
What the 49ers offense was able to do in 2025 with the multiple fires at receiver it had to put out is nothing short of remarkable.
It started with what seemed to be a normal recovery window for Brandon Aiyuk after his 2024 knee injury, which then devolved into the star receiver going AWOL in a situation still not yet resolved. Ricky Pearsall was supposed to take his next step and showed that promise when he was on the field, but a knee injury held him to just nine games, and the lingering effects of the injury have cost Pearsall the 2026 season.
Jauan Jennings was solid throughout the season, but the receiving corps struggled with Kendrick Bourne and DeMarcus Robinson playing key roles in the absences of Aiyuk and Pearsall. Not-a-wide-receiver Christian McCaffrey is who kept the position afloat, with his first 100-catch season since 2019.
Wholesale changes came over the offseason with the 49ers signing veterans Mike Evans and Christian Kirk, while using the team’s first draft selection on De’Zhaun Stribling to shore up the unit. But Evans isn’t getting any younger and has dealt with some nagging injuries the last few seasons, while Kirk missed nine games just two years ago with a broken collarbone, and a calf injury has kept him out of training camp the past few weeks.
On paper, the 49ers receiving corps is much better compared to what it was last year, but the moves made over the offseason didn’t exactly fend off the concerns of high-injury potential at the position.
What can be expected from Deebo Samuel?
With the news of Pearsall being out for the season, the 49ers wasted no time in setting up the reunion with Deebo Samuel.
While it’s fun to rekindle the memories of what Samuel meant to the 49ers in his first stint, it would be downright insane to think that that version of Deebo Samuel could make an appearance in 2026. While the role of an all-use offensive weapon might be reprised, it will be on a far lesser scale for a now 30-year-old Samuel.
Samuel was brought in as the replacement for Pearsall, but his role will be vastly different; I think he was brought in more as a reprieve for the injuries in the running back group than for the receiving corps.
The best-case scenario for Samuel is being the No. 3 receiver on the team, behind Evans and Stribling, while there’s even a chance somebody like Kirk or Robinson could out-target him. But the role is already laid out: he’s likely to step into some spots where McCaffrey would have been used last season out of necessity. Because of Deebo, instead of forcing a top-three running back in the league to it, you can use a player like Samuel to take some of the unnecessary wear-and-tear McCaffrey took in 2025.
He likely won’t be near the 90-touch plateau he’s been at the last few seasons, but Samuel’s role will be an important one, especially if he can take some of the workload off of McCaffrey with roughly the same production.
What is the first-year ceiling for De’Zhaun Stribling?
There has been no player on the 49ers whose stock has grown over the first few weeks of training camp like Stribling. Part of that growth has come from Stribling himself, while some factors around him certainly haven’t hurt his cause.
When the 49ers made Stribling the 33rd selection in last April’s draft, the pick certainly turned some heads. Not even factoring that Stribling wasn’t considered a top receiver in the draft at the time, the pick was head-scratching with the then-recent signings of Evans and Kirk, with Pearsall expected to be ready to play. In essence, the 49ers used their top pick on a player who would enter camp as the team’s No. 4 receiver.
As things tend to do in the NFL, the situation changed. Kirk has dealt with an injury that has kept him out of camp, and Pearsall has been lost for the 2026 season. Those injuries alone have launched Stribling into the conversation to be the 49ers’ No. 2 receiver entering the regular season.
Players typically don’t earn spots due to injury in the NFL, but Stribling’s play during training camp has done the most to earn him the consideration for the spot behind Evans. It’s tough to go a day reading training camp reports without some sort of mention of Stribling’s performance.
While we have seen players, specifically receivers (think Trent Sherfield), jump off the page with solid training camp performances, it’s hard to not be excited for what Stribling can be with how much he has meshed with the 49ers since drafted.
