Nick WagonerNov 24, 2025, 06:00 AM ETCloseNick Wagoner is an NFL reporter at ESPN. Nick has covered the San Francisco 49ers since 2016, having previously covered the St. Louis Rams for 12 years, including three years (2013 to 2015) at ESPN. In over a decade with the company, Nick has led ESPN’s coverage of the Niners’ 2019 and 2023 Super Bowl run, Colin Kaepernick’s protest, the Rams making Michael Sam the first openly gay player drafted to the NFL, Sam’s subsequent pursuit of a roster spot and the team’s relocation and stadium saga.Follow on X
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SANTA CLARA, Calif. — With just under seven minutes left in a Week 11 victory against the Arizona Cardinals, San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey sprinted wide left and 2 yards off the line of scrimmage before the snap.
The motion left McCaffrey isolated against Cardinals cornerback Max Melton, a running back versus cornerback matchup that under normal circumstances, would mean the ball was headed elsewhere. That’s especially true on third-and-15 with the Niners leading by 19.
McCaffrey reeled it in for a first down. Two plays later, his 4-yard touchdown plunge put the game away. But when it was over, teammates and coaches marveled at that 15-yard catch.
Eleven games into his ninth season, McCaffrey continues to prove Purdy right. As the 49ers (7-4) prepare to face McCaffrey’s former team, the Carolina Panthers (6-5), on Monday night (8:15 ET, ESPN), McCaffrey is having one of his most productive seasons as he finds unique ways to pick apart defenses. His continued evolution as a route runner and pass catcher has made stopping him nearly impossible.
Through 11 weeks of the 2025 season, McCaffrey leads the NFL in scrimmage yards (1,439), is tied for second in total touchdowns (11), is the only player with at least 700 rushing and 700 receiving yards, and has exceeded 100 scrimmage yards nine times.
For McCaffrey, who is coming off an injury-plagued 2024 and will turn 30 next June, it’s all part of his path to becoming one of the most accomplished all-around running backs in NFL history. This season he became the fourth player in league history to amass at least 7,000 rushing and 5,000 receiving yards in a career.
It’s a journey rooted in the McCaffrey family ethos that the way you do anything is the way you do everything. Whether it’s running the ball, catching it, blocking, notetaking or even stretching, McCaffrey is singularly obsessed with being great at the pluralities that his job entails.
It didn’t take Max, a former Duke receiver who appeared in five NFL games with the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2017, long to recognize that Christian was going to make his mark on football by contributing in every way possible.
In one little league game in Colorado that Max remembers happening when his brother was in fifth or sixth grade, Christian boomed a punt, chased down the returner, forced a fumble and returned it for a touchdown.
“A lot of people ask, ‘Did you always know he’s going to go to the NFL and be elite?'” said Max, who now works for the Miami Dolphins as an offensive assistant. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, I did.’ … That was one of the most ridiculous plays I’d ever seen.”
According to those who witnessed Christian McCaffrey’s rise, his combination of athletic ability, football smarts and work ethic made his eventual success as an all-around running back predictable.
When Christian started playing football at 7, he chose running back because peewee teams were not throwing the ball much and he wanted to score touchdowns.
According to Christian, he got no pushback from his father or older brother on choosing a different position, but it was assumed that pass catching would be part of his football education.
That extended to route running, where McCaffrey wouldn’t spend his days running a bunch of routes. Instead, he and Max would work on two or three, focusing on the intricacies required to do them right.
If Christian was running a deep comeback, Ed wanted him to focus on taking three steps instead of five when coming out of his break. If it was a short hitch route, he wanted one step instead of three. Eliminating wasted movement was the objective.
“It was all very purposeful,” Christian said. “I do remember very vividly him being so detailed with, if you’re going to do something, there’s a way to do it and it’s as best as you possibly can. And then if you fail, you fail. But at least you did everything you could.”
With that mentality already ingrained by the time he got to Valor Christian High in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, McCaffrey viewed every practice rep as an opportunity to improve.
“He got a chance to see how I worked out and then how I challenged guys on film study and how I challenged guys on the practice field,” Dawkins said. “I think he got a chance to see my approach to prepare for a game and what that intensity looks like.”
Depending on the matchups, McCaffrey would play cornerback or safety, his primary assignment to eliminate the other team’s best skill position player.
During their two years together, Dawkins saw in McCaffrey a competitor so intent on winning every rep that on the rare occasions he’d lose one in practice, he’d demand a redo. McCaffrey appreciated Dawkins’ pregame speeches and prayers.
On the field, Dawkins pointed out to McCaffrey that opposing defensive backs would often view running backs as decoys when split out wide, which meant that if he took it seriously enough, he might be able to catch them off guard.
“That is not an everybody thing,” Dawkins said. “Some people are gifted to be able to play the game of football, and they’re able to then go to the next level, and they pick up on the things that they need to pick up on to a certain extent to have success. Then there’s other individuals that go up and above. There is a level of obsession to being great that Christian has always had.”
McCaffrey’s dad played with Terrell Davis with the Broncos, and McCaffrey noted Davis’ mastery of the outside zone running scheme. He enjoyed watching Detroit’s Barry Sanders and his ability to make tacklers miss.
But, according to McCaffrey, two of his favorite running backs to watch were Faulk and LaDainian Tomlinson. They jumped off the TV screen because of the many ways they could beat defenses, even those loaded up to stop the run.
“It puts you in that mindset of if you want to be like these guys, this is what they’re doing,” McCaffrey said. “The more you watch something, the more it kind of becomes a reality.”
For most of his football career, Tomlinson had an idea that he could be a proficient pass catcher if given the opportunity.
That didn’t come until he was drafted by the Chargers in 2001. After a couple of solid seasons, Tomlinson found himself on the golf course with Faulk, long considered one of the best pass-catching running backs of all time.
“That’s when the light bulb went off for me,” Tomlinson told ESPN. “Teams can devote resources to stopping the run if they really want to. They can stop it, but it is very hard for them to stop you coming out of the backfield.”
That’s an idea McCaffrey carries with him, and it has proved especially important this season as defenses have limited him to 3.7 yards per carry, tied for the lowest of his career. But with Purdy, tight end George Kittle and receiver Ricky Pearsall healthy, he believes the run game can surge over the final six games.
“I just felt unstoppable at the height of it,” Tomlinson said. “I just felt like there was no one out there who can check me. I always explain it like ‘The Matrix.’ That’s how I saw the game. It was really in slow motion.”
IN THE MONOTONY of the NFL season, watching McCaffrey practice provides entertainment for teammates such as fullback Kyle Juszczyk and Kittle.
One moment, McCaffrey might be lined up as an outside receiver running a triple move. The next, he might run a short post from 5 yards deep in the backfield after motioning to the slot. In between, he never stops moving. In the rare moments when he’s not on the field, McCaffrey uses a massage gun to loosen his hamstrings and glutes.
That constant motion is part of why coach Kyle Shanahan has, on multiple occasions, referred to McCaffrey as a “psycho” — in a positive way, of course.
“It’s just nonstop,” Juszczyk said. “He’s 24/7. He’s always doing something. The guy’s never not moving. He’s just constantly trying to do something to get his body ready and perfect his craft.”
Since the 49ers traded second-, third- and fourth-round picks in the 2023 NFL draft and a fifth-round selection in 2024 to the Panthers for him in October 2022, McCaffrey’s role has been limited only by the boundaries of Shanahan’s imagination.
The ensuing years have seen the Niners add a variety of motions and routes from unusual depths behind the line of scrimmage that no other player in the league is regularly running. Like the one against Arizona.
According to ESPN Research, McCaffrey’s 15-yard catch was the first time a running back ran a comeback route and caught a pass that traveled at least 15 yards in the air since ESPN and NFL Next Gen Stats began tracking such things in 2017. He also caught one for 13 yards in Week 2, and no other running back has caught one farther than 9 yards down the field since 2017.
“Players evolve offenses,” Shanahan said. “When you get certain types of players, that’s when offenses change. You always want to attack defenses and there’s only so many ways to do it, but when you get different types of players, offenses expand, and I think he’s changed our offense.”
To make that happen, McCaffrey has expanded his game. He said he has always been a good — not great — route runner but when he arrived in San Francisco, he thought it was necessary to go beyond the basic option and flat routes that most running backs run.
In the offseason, McCaffrey spends workout days focused on receiver routes. As training camp approaches, he starts with running back drills and then runs 15 to 20 routes, mixing in some that might not get called in games but that he wants to fine tune-in case Shanahan adds them to the game plan.
