49ers coach Kyle Shanahan can’t wait for superstar running back Christian McCaffrey’s return from bilateral Achilles tendinitis, which likely will be against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 10 of the 2024 NFL season.
“He looked good,” Shanahan told Greg Papa about McCaffrey in the latest edition of NBC Sports Bay Area’s “49ers Game Plan.” “Yeah, we’re excited to have him back. He should be good to go here. We got to be smart with him. We’ll find out as the game goes, what the exact plan is, but I just know we’re pumped to have him back.”
McCaffrey, of course, is the league’s reigning Offensive Player of the Year and is coming off a 2023 campaign where he had 2,023 yards from scrimmage and 21 touchdowns. At 4-4, San Francisco probably couldn’t have gone without its ace any longer.
Not lost by Shanahan, though, is the stellar job the running back room has done without McCaffrey. Jordan Mason has kept the team’s running game afloat — averaging 5.1 yards per carry and collecting 685 overall — and rookie Isaac Guerendo has run for at least 85 yards in two of San Francisco’s last three games.
Shanahan will have to do some rotational shuffling and tweaking as McCaffrey’s snap count increases. However, having three trustworthy options in the backfield besides quarterback Brock Purdy is a good problem.
“We’ll see as it goes with Christian,” Shanahan told Papa. “You don’t sit there and just split everything up just to do it. You keep the people out there that give you the best chance to win on each play, and Christian is just a little bit different because he does so much extra besides running the ball.
“But, it’s been good not having him, getting those guys so much playing time. JP’s been in and out over the last couple years, but he’s never been able to carry an entire game. For him to carry us … he’s gotten better each week. He’s really shown everyone that he can do it. And then Isaac, we loved his talent, but you need to get in those games, you need to get the reps … He’s shown some promising things and some things he’s got to improve at and the stuff we hit him hard at practice with.”
Between Mason and Guerendo, the 49ers rank third in the NFL in yards per carry (5.1) and sixth in overall rushing yards (1,272). Adding a two-time All-Pro in McCaffrey presumably will make those numbers even better.
Where San Francisco could use McCaffrey is in the red zone. The 49ers are scoring touchdowns a fifth-worst 48.6 percent of the time. Parallelly, the 49ers have been fine on third downs, converting a sixth-best 43.3 percent of them.
“I wouldn’t say ‘solve them,’ but he definitely helps,” Shanahan told Papa about McCaffrey solving offensive problems. “There’s nothing in football that I believe one guy can solve; it’s 11 guys tied together, so many things going in different directions. But when you have a player like Christian, he helps a lot.
“We’re very low on the red zone right now. We’re doing decent on third down, we’d like to do better. But the red zone has been a struggle, and adding a player like Christian, it definitely doesn’t hurt.”
McCaffrey was last season’s all-purpose yards leader by 161 yards. As Shanahan explained, adding the future Pro Football Hall of Fame selection will only help San Francisco.