De'Zhaun Stribling, Kyle McCord, and Other Preseason Crushes

Preseason is for falling in love.

No one cares who wins or loses a preseason game, with the possible exception of the players on the field at the end of the fourth quarter and particularly obsessive coaches.  The results are meaningless, the schemes are vanilla, the broadcast goes into long interviews with owners and general managers rather than attempting to do even the mildest form of play-by-play – it’s an attempt to whet your appetite and flog you some tickets.  It is likely that, in the near future, the preseason schedule will be truncated again to facilitate an extended regular season, and the world will keep spinning.

That doesn’t mean the games are meaningless, though!  It’s our first chance to see this year’s rookie class in action. The first time to see new acquisitions play for their new teams. And the first real indicator of depth charts, as the PR-produced sheets created before each game are worth the paper they’re printed on.  It’s a chance for depth guys to turn heads, and crushes to develop on Depth Player You’ve Never Heard Of.

The preseason superstar normally stays in preseason – remember Tanner McKee fever last year?  The Augusts of Dorian Thompson-Robinson and Aiden O’Connell?  Usually these get washed away when the starters come back and these guys revert to practice squads around the league.  But some people climb depth charts and earn starting roles based on their preseason performance. And even the ones who don’t can lodge in your mind.  It’s great when your preseason binkie makes a 53-man roster, or you see him coming into a game in November as an injury replacement and go “oh yeah, he made that cool one-handed catch in that game one time”.  Maybe you’ll never think of these guys again.  Or maybe you will, and can go “I saw him first!”

Having now made it through (at least condensed versions of) all the Week 1 preseason games, I’ve put together a lineup of players who caught my eye.  I’m not including anyone I would consider an established starter, with hundreds and hundreds of regular season snaps – I don’t care how Joe Burrow or Jordan Love or Anthony Richardson looked in preseason; I’ve seen more than enough of them in games that count to give a flying fig about dress rehearsal.  And I’m not at all stating that this list is definitive or “Bryan Knowles’ Best Players Of Preseason Week 1” with some kind of arbitrary grade slapped on each one.

It’s just a list of players that made that made me go “oooh” and want to see more in the second week of preseason.  And maybe even into the regular season, should the cards fall the right way. Leave your own in the comments so other people can watch your binkies this week! Here are mine.

Quarterback

QB Kyle McCord, Green Bay

A lot of the ooing and aahing from the first weekend was over Ty Simpson, who went 21-for-25 for 190 yards and a pair of touchdowns.  I mean, that’s better than not doing that, but that was the most stage-managed debut I can remember for a first-round pick. Sean McVay's puppet strings could be seen from halfway across the field.

ty simpson preseason - average depth of target: 4.72 yards downfield (last-ranked QB in the NFL last year: 6.00 ADOT) throws over ten yards: 24.4% (would have been dead last in the NFL last year) throws over twenty yards: 0

— Arif Hasan, but NFL🔨⚒️🛠️ (@arif.bsky.social) 7:02 PM · Aug 15, 2026

He was fine, and he took what the defense gave him, and all those other cliches, but I've seen Ty Simpson before, and that looked a lot like Ty Simpson. Ditto Fernando Mendoza, who was certainly not bad in his debut – but I'm going to remember him talking about how confusing it was having to drive himself to the game more than anything he actually did on Thursday.

No, the real sicko favorite at quarterback in Week 1? Kyle McCord, who spent last year on the Eagles' practice squad and was brought in by the Packers to kind of flesh out their quarterback room after Malik Willis went to Miami. McCord was expected to battle Kyron Drones for the QB3 slot for a team that does not keep three quarterbacks; a developmental practice squad guy.

Well, McCord's battle is over. Drones was released over the weekend, with Matt LaFleur specifically pointing to McCord's production against Pittsburgh as being a factor why.

Drones is an athletic ball of traits still learning the position. McCord is a more traditional pocket passer, so perhaps it's not surprising that he was the one who looked like he belonged on the field against Pittsburgh. Drones played the last two drives, was sacked three times and completed zero passes. McCord came in early in the first half, looking crisp and accurate – 12-for-16 for 102 yards. No touchdowns, yes, but he ran the two-minute offense well and got Green Bay in range for a field goal as the first half expired. Hanging in the pocket, finding targets under pressure, knowing when to tuck and run. Professionally done! He had a nice hit on Isaiah Neyor under pressure on that two-minute drill; a couple times where he went smoothly through his progressions and made the right decision, and he did so without it looking like he was physically being controlled by a joystick on the sidelines.

There was a nice throw on that two-minute drill, when the Steelers had an unblocked guy come through, where he stood in and hit Isaiah Neyor to move the chains. He also several times went through his progressions very nicely; it wasn't all first-read point-and-click passing. I like it! I hope to see Simpson do that some this week!

McCord should get plenty of playing time against Denver Friday. Could he climb up to QB2? Ehhh... I suspect LaFleur would rather have the veteran Tyrod Taylor there in case Love misses a few weeks here or there, rather than a younger developmental guy. But LaFleur is certainly open to that, with Willis being his backup of choice last year. And if McCord looks great against Denver and Taylor struggles, maybe we do see something – or the Packers prioritize getting him on the practice squad, who knows.

Skill Positions

RB Jacob Saylors, Detroit
WR Camden Brown, Dallas
WR Myles Price, Minnesota
WR De'Zhaun Stribling, San Francisco
TE Matthew Hibner, Baltimore

Oh, I may be wrong, wrong, wrong about Stribling.

It feels like De'Zhaun Stribling is a round too early, which makes him a typical 49ers draft pick. Not a bad player mind you! But Boston, Branch, Bell, Brazzel, Bernard all still on the board, and that's just the Bs.

— Bryan Knowles (@brykno.bsky.social) 6:18 PM · Apr 24, 2026

Stribling went 33rd overall to San Francisco, when most internet mocks had him down in the third. The internet does not draft players, mind you, and there's some evidence that at least a few draft rooms around the league had Stribling a bit higher than the general public consensus, but it's safe to say that Stribling was not universally considered a top-40 player. Aaron Schatz's Playmaker score had him as WR14 in the class, and that was more or less backed up elsewhere.

It's important that a team sticks to their own evaluations over GroupThink and all that, and a team's draft team is going to spend more time evaluating a player in context of their own system and needs more than the general public. But the 49ers do make a habit of this; drafting players well earlier than they are projected. And their hit rate doing so is...nothing special. 49ers fans do not remember Tyrion Davis-Price or Joe Williams with fondness.

Some skepticism over Stribling, then, was warranted and expected. But ever since arriving in San Francisco, all we've heard about is just how well Stribling was doing in camp – every day brought new, breathless headlines from beat writers. Maybe that was just the 49ers new secondary having trouble? And, besides, who could follow all of that between the noise of just which 49er got hurt on each day. We'll need to see him in action.

Then we saw him in action, and I mean...

The bomb down the sideline, and the next catch where he plows through a Titan defender and keeps moving – they've got me. He lined up both wide and in the slot, showed great hands, some YAC ability when the throws were actually on target – I love him, I'm all in. Kyle Shanahan has never really had a pair of tall boundary receivers like Stribling and Mike Evans, and I'm excited to see them together for the seven plays both will simultaneously be healthy.

Seriously, though – we thought the 49ers would work Stribling in slowly, with Christian Kirk being the 49ers third wideout. No. It's Stribling, he's going to start from Week 1, you can put him in your flex spot in fantasy, we're good to go. I hope to see him on a drive with Brock Purdy this Thursday against the Chargers, and then to see him encased in bubble wrap for the rest of the preseason.

But Stribling didn't make the best catches of Week 1. That would be Dallas' Camden Brown.