Then there was one. The San Francisco 49ers have only one member of their 2024 draft class to sign, having signed sixth-round guard Jarrett Kingston to a four-year contract.
Kingston’s agreement to terms leaves the 49ers’ first-round pick Ricky Pearsall as the lone player who has yet to sign his rookie contract.
The fact that Pearsall is still unsigned at this point in the calendar is not cause for concern. A number of first-round picks have yet to sign contracts, and with the rookie wage scale assigning each draft pick a compensation based on their draft status, holdouts are essentially a thing of the past.
Last season, the Seattle Seahawks saw Devon Witherspoon hold out because of an issue surrounding the payment of his signing bonus. That holdout lasted until the third day of training camp. In 2019, the 49ers did not sign Nick Bosa until July, with that delay the product of quibbles over offset language.
It’s not clear at this point what the hold up is with Pearsall, but the 49ers won’t be anywhere close to being worried.
While the 49ers will want the 31st overall pick to hit the ground running and quickly show enough understanding of Kyle Shanahan’s offense to get on the field early and often, the reality is Pearsall is not under that much pressure because of the level of talent ahead of him in the pecking order. He will likely start the season as at best the fifth option when you consider the receiving game talents of All-Pro tight end George Kittle and reigning Offensive Player of the Year Christian McCaffrey.
As such, the 49ers would likely be pretty calm about contract discussions with Pearsall dragging towards training camp, but they’re still a long way from getting to a stage where his contract would become a more pressing issue.
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