De’Zhaun Stribling has eleven catches on thirteen targets for 109 yards through two 49ers preseason games. That’s a good stat line for a rookie nobody drafted to start. It’s also the least interesting number in this story.
The number that actually matters belongs to Robert Saleh, and it isn’t a number at all. It’s a sentence the Titans’ head coach had no real reason to say out loud after Tennessee beat San Francisco 19-13 in the preseason opener: “That Stribling kid is going to be pretty good. He’s a big, strong receiver.” Saleh spent all of 2025 as the 49ers’ own defensive coordinator before Tennessee hired him away in January. He wasn’t guessing. He’d game-planned around this exact receiver room for a full season, and he still walked over and said the quiet part to reporters anyway.
The Numbers Behind Stribling’s Preseason
Start with the opener. Stribling caught seven passes for 63 yards in the first half against the Titans alone, per ESPN — before halftime, in a game the 49ers went on to lose. NFL analyst Ryan Paganetti flagged the sample as historically rare: Stribling is only the second receiver in the past decade to catch seven passes in the first 20 minutes of a preseason game, matching a mark Buffalo’s Isaiah McKenzie set in 2021. Preseason targets are normally scattered across four quarterbacks and a dozen receivers all fighting for a roster spot, which is exactly why a sample size that small usually means nothing. Getting seven real looks before the first-half whistle is a workload a coaching staff hands to someone it already trusts with the ball, not a courtesy rep for a guy trying to make the 53.
Game two against the Chargers read more ordinary and still held up. Stribling caught four of five targets for 46 yards in a 41-17 blowout win, split across series with Brock Purdy and Mac Jones — three catches for 25 yards with Purdy, one for 21 with Jones, meaning two different quarterbacks looked his way and connected regardless of who was throwing. He also dropped a would-be touchdown on a double-move route when the ball came out early. Add the two games together and it’s eleven catches on thirteen targets for 109 yards, against NFL competition, in August, from a rookie who wasn’t a marquee pick.
Why Robert Saleh’s Praise Matters More Than the Stat Line
Coaches don’t typically volunteer scouting reports on someone else’s WR3 in August. Postgame pressers are built for clock-management questions and vague optimism about your own team, not free intel about the guy who just gave your secondary trouble. Saleh offered it anyway, unprompted, in comments captured by NBC Sports Bay Area, and he’s about as well-positioned as anyone outside the building to know what he’s looking at.
I trust my younger sister’s game picks more than my own model precisely when she isn’t trying to win an argument with me. Same logic applies here. A team’s own PR account hyping its rookie wants you to believe the pick is working out. A coach with real institutional knowledge of that receiver room, and nothing to gain from being generous about a player who now plays for a team he doesn’t, is just describing what he saw. That’s a cleaner signal than any single line in a preseason box score.
How Pearsall’s Injury Changes the Math
None of this happens in a vacuum. Ricky Pearsall’s season-ending knee injury took the presumptive No. 2 receiver off the field for all of 2026, with a recovery timeline that rules him out through the calendar year. That opened real reps behind Stribling’s start, not hypothetical ones, and it landed in a training camp that already had five key names out before Stribling ever lined up against Tennessee.
Stribling ran 15 routes in the opener, 10 from the slot and 5 outside. That two-to-one split is the alignment teams use for a receiver they trust to win quickly against a linebacker or nickel corner in space, not the alignment they use to hide someone. Receivers coach Leonard Hankerson currently has him projected to the slot, with a path to Pearsall’s vacated Z spot on the outside if the tape keeps holding up. Kyle Shanahan’s read on the debut matched Saleh’s, just in fewer words: “I liked how his hands looked out there and played physical.”
Is Stribling Actually This Good?
Two preseason games and one drop is a small sample, but the direction is consistent: 11 catches on 13 targets for 109 yards, a rare 7-catch first half, and a target share opening up behind an injured Pearsall, all validated by an opponent’s coach volunteering praise nobody asked him for.
The drop against the Chargers is the one data point working against that read, and it’s worth sitting with instead of waving off. Shanahan didn’t bury him for it: “That’s his strength, is his hands…he’s got the ability to do it, so he needs to come down with that one.” Even the correction got framed around what Stribling does well. Ian Rapoport picked up on the same trend before this piece did:
https://twitter.com/RapSheet/status/2088336456225853635
A national insider and a coach who spent a season inside the building landing on the same read, independently, isn’t the kind of overlap that happens by accident in August. Insiders have sources to protect and reputations built on being early. Coaches have game plans to defend and, in Saleh’s case, a former employer he has no obligation to flatter. Neither had a reason to inflate a preseason storyline unless the tape actually supported it.
Give me Stribling as the 49ers’ clear WR2 by Week 1. The route detail says he’s earning it, the two-game math says it’s sustainable enough to trust, and the guy with the least reason to say anything nice about him said it anyway. That last part is the whole argument. Everything else is just the box score catching up to it.
