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49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan is optimistic that first-round rookie wide receiver Ricky Pearsall will play in the Week One opener against the Jets on Monday Night Football.
Asked after Friday’s preseason finale whether Pearsall can go in Week One, Shanahan indicated that Pearsall’s shoulder injury is getting better and he is trending toward being cleared to play.
“I hope so. We’ll see how he is this week,” Shanahan said. “Hoping to get back into practice this week, and if he does that’s a pretty good sign he could be available.”
Although Shanahan acknowledged that the 49ers knew when they drafted Pearsall that he had previously injured his shoulder in college, he downplayed the significance of the injury. Shanahan said Pearsall has a shoulder subluxation, which is a partial dislocation that Shanahan says is so common in football that half the players in the draft had it at some point in their college careers.
“I don’t play doctor,” Shanahan said. “He did it in college, I think his junior year. About 50 percent of the people coming out of college do that. That really wasn’t a problem. He did it in OTAs for the first time with us, and when you do that it’s tender, and then he re-did it here a couple weeks ago, and that makes it tender, so you want to give him time to come back from it.”
Shanahan said Pearsall’s shoulder was not considered a medical red flag from the 49ers’ perspective.
“No, not at all,” Shanahan said. “It’s a pretty normal thing.”
Pearsall hasn’t been practicing or playing in the preseason because of the shoulder, which is particularly concerning for the 49ers because wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk is also not practicing or playing because of an ongoing contract dispute. The 49ers would like to have a full complement of wide receivers against the Jets, but they don’t currently know whether they’ll have Pearsall, Aiyuk, both or neither.