ClutchPoints
The San Francisco 49ers continue to deal with Brandon Aiyuk, but they have a rookie who is turning heads in a positive way. There’s hope for a good year, and here are three 49ers sleepers who could break out in the 2026 NFL season.
Coming off a 12-5 season that ended with a playoff disaster against the eventual Super Bowl champion Seahawks, the 49ers made some good moves in the offseason to position themselves for another postseason run.
It will help matters if these three players reach their potential all at the same time.
It’s time. Yes, he had a tough start to his NFL career. And the former first-round pick is still just 25 years old. But after two nondescript seasons with less than 40 catches each year and only 928 total yards, Pearsall needs to hit the ground running in 2026, according to sports-reference.com via Sports Illustrated.
“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,” Parker Hurley wrote. “Of those, only 10 went on to sign legitimate contract extensions, with nine of them being on the team that drafted them.
“Pearsall is starting to get closer to being lumped in with names like Jonathan Mingo, Kadarius Toney, Elijah Moore, and Jalen Reagor.”
The 49ers need Pearsall to be a strong running mate for newly signed Mike Evans. That could make their offense very dangerous, according to Robert Mays of The Athletic via ninersnation.com.
“I think if (George) Kittle stays healthy, and if Kittle can come back and be on the field early in the season, and this is a terrifying thing to say, but if Pearsall can stay healthy, the combination of Mike Evans—even at this stage of his career, Kittle, Pearsall, and McCaffrey, to me, is absolutely terrifying,” Mays said.
“But beyond the big-picture takeaways and being reminded of how good it is, one of my conclusions after rewatching this is that I think Pearsall is a star. I legitimately think he’s a star-level player. With Kittle, with Evans, with McCaffrey, and everything Kyle Shanahan is doing, that to me is why they’re so high on the (best supporting cast) list for me.”
The problem with Williams isn’t with his run defense. But can he provide pressure on opposing quarterbacks? That’s a big question, according to Sports Illustrated.
“He came into the NFL as a better run defender than pass rusher, so he did live up to expectations,” Hurley wrote. “However, there are now legitimate questions about what type of pass-rush impact he can provide, if any at all.
“Williams has one sack in his rookie year, and even that sack came when he was rushing along the interior, not on the edge. Now, he is coming off an ACL injury and just played nine games.”...
