Christian McCaffrey is a Super Bowl reminder that running backs still matter

WWhen the San Francisco 49ers traded Christian McCaffrey to the Carolina Panthers midway through the 2022 season, they went against the grain. Conventional wisdom had been working against running backs for a decade or more, as team after team in the NFL realized they could find effective tailbacks without using premium draft picks or flashy free agent contracts to acquire them. The running backs, the league knows, are a relatively expendable group.

But McCaffrey was a different animal, so the 49ers gave up a small ransom to get him: four draft picks over two years: a second, third, fourth and fifth rounder. McCaffrey played well in 2022, but the Niners pushed their chips even further for this season: They restructured McCaffrey’s already massive contract to create about $9 million in space under the salary cap this year. The bill will have to be paid later, and it will be huge, but the 49ers knew they had a precious opportunity to get their best shot at a Super Bowl. They had a useful quarterback, Brock Purdy, on a cheap rookie contract. They had a Hall of Fame tackle, Trent Williams, who was still playing well at age 35. And they had two of the best defensive players in the NFL, Nick Bosa and Fred Warner, in their prime.

By playing elite play at the right time on the 49ers’ organizational calendar, McCaffrey may have been the marginal difference that pushed the 49ers from a regular elite team to a Super Bowl contender against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night. While the Kansas City offense revolves around Patrick Mahomes and his star partner Travis Kelce, who are still formidable after so many years together, the 49ers offense scores because of a versatile attack that shows no weaknesses when running or passing the ball.

And of course, it’s McCaffrey whose hands are squarely on this offense. Everything the 49ers do runs through him in one way or another. Running back value may be on the decline, but McCaffrey is an example of what can happen when a team has a truly special someone who contributes to the offense in countless ways.

McCaffrey led the league in rushing by a wide margin, 1,459 yards are nearly 300 yards shy of second-place Derrick Henry. But that’s only part of the story. He was extremely efficient, posting an average rush of 5.4 yards on 272 carries. Including his 67 receptions, he led the league with 339 touches and an average of six yards per touch. Only one running back averaged more; that was a backup (De’Von Achane of the Miami Dolphins) who handled about a third of McCaffrey’s workload. There are no NFL players who get the ball more often than McCaffrey, and there aren’t even any players who get the ball nearly as often while posting anything like his efficiency stats. The seventh-year pro, who was a collegiate star at Stanford before starting his career at Carolina, is in a league of his own.

Being a 49er certainly helped him. McCaffrey is averaging 3.2 yards per carry for contact with a defender, while his offensive line – led by the ageless Williams – pushes potential tacklers out of the way. That figure led the league among running backs in the regular season, and overshadowed the total average yards per carry for a pair of NFL backs. That doesn’t mean McCaffrey got a free ride. Its 2.2 meters after contact ranked sixth in the NFL as defenders discovered that getting their hands on McCaffrey isn’t much better than not being able to get to him at all. McCaffrey is known for his elusiveness, but his strength this year wasn’t even making defensive players miss. (His 15 broken tackles ranked him 17th in the NFL.) Instead, tackling McCaffrey was brutal and required a lot of strength and real estate. Reaching him was only part of the battle.

McCaffrey’s determination complements his explosiveness. He don’t drop a pass this season on his 83 receiving goals. He fumbled three times, which is a big number for him, but overall he showed amazing hands. The 49ers tried to get him the ball more than 350 times this season. McCaffrey was responsible for the ball falling on three of those plays, a rate of just 0.8%.

The 27-year-old has a solid case for entering the Pro Football Hall of Fame one day, and a Super Bowl would be an excellent resume item for a player who has already made two All-Pro teams. McCaffrey should also do well at the NFL postseason awards announced this weekend, as he has already won the American Football Writers’ Association Offensive Player of the Year honors this season. If non-quarterbacks were seriously considered for the league’s MVP award, McCaffrey would be a candidate for that as well.

Winning the Super Bowl would also put McCaffrey one-third of the way toward matching his father, Ed, who won three during a 13-year career spent primarily with the Denver Broncos. One of Ed’s rings came with the same 49ers franchise in 1994, but he didn’t record a single touch in that Niners Super Bowl win. For the team to get another one now, Christian might have to touch the ball a few more times. Maybe around 30?