Are 49ers better off with less Christian McCaffrey? Maybe so with this rookie RB

Less Christian McCaffrey … the better for the 49ers?

Hear the guy out, at least.

“I think when it comes to the run game, when you can keep backs fresh,” the Niners’ all-purpose superstar said this week, “it’s a good change of pace for defenses, and it also can help keep the run game going. It doesn’t really eliminate people’s touches.”

It’s actually not so crazy, not after the load Kyle Shanahan’s favorite weapon carried last season. Moderation is the key to a lot of things in life, and it turns out taking a pounding from NFL tacklers is no exception. 

There hadn’t been a player since Demarco Murray in 2014 to get the ball as many times as McCaffrey. But more touches — 413 of them — didn’t necessarily equate to better outcomes.

McCaffrey averaged fewer than 4 yards per carry for the first time since joining the 49ers in 2022. As a team, San Francisco’s running game was not only its least efficient in Shanahan’s nine seasons — its 3.8 yards per carry were its fewest since Dennis Erickson was in charge.

With the weight increasingly on his shoulders as teammates seemingly went down week after week, McCaffrey looked around the league and saw a better way of doing things.

In Atlanta, Bijan Robinson took fewer handoffs from the year before but put up the most yards from scrimmage of his career, the most in the NFL. In Detroit, Jahmyr Gibbs did something similar. Both running backs kept up with or exceeded their career outputs while minimizing the bruising they took in the process.

That’s because they had capable backups helping them out. David Montgomery took 36% of the Lions’ carries; Tyler Allgeier picked up 30% of the load for the Falcons.

In San Francisco, McCaffrey was a man on an island. He had no such luxury. He accounted for 65% of the 49ers’ handoffs; the next-closest player was Brian Robinson, at less than 20%.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

And just one game into this season, it would appear that won’t be the case again.

McCaffrey didn’t even take the most handoffs in the 49ers’ 27-7 season-opening win over the Rams. He racked up 68 yards on only 10 carries. Kaelon Black, a third-round rookie out of Indiana, carried it 14 times for 65 yards. As a team, they finished with 174 yards on 30 handoffs — an average of 5.8 yards, better than all but one game a year ago.

“I was a little surprised at the end just that Kaelon got more than Christian,” Shanahan said. “That was just kind of how the game went. Has a lot to do with probably me starting out the game. I think I had like three runs in the first 17 plays, but [I] love taking some off Christian and love the fact that Kaelon was prepared for everything, the run game and the pass game, and allowed us to be able to do that.”

It didn’t matter who got the ball. And that’s no knock on McCaffrey.

“Either back who touched the ball, to me, they were explosive, they were powerful,” offensive coordinator Klay Kubiak said. “We were something like 29th in rushing last year. It wasn’t good enough.”

There wasn’t one game last season that McCaffrey didn’t finish as the 49ers’ leading ball carrier. The 49ers are 36-13 with McCaffrey since trading for him midway through 2023. Last week was only the second time they’ve won when he has carried the ball 10 or fewer times.

He was more or less an observer on San Francisco’s scoring drive to take a 10-7 lead into halftime. Black ran it five times for gains of 5, 9, 9, 5 and 4 yards before Brock Purdy found Demarcus Robinson over the top for a 39-yard strike into the end zone.

McCaffrey had three carries going into the break. It was all the easier for him to help the 49ers land the knockout punch in the third quarter, carrying seven times for 51 yards.

“I think it was such a good way to keep people fresh, take them out, put them in for plays you really need them,” McCaffrey said. “I think [Black] is good enough to do that, so I think that’s the benefit. It really helps everybody.”

Black finished with the most yards by a 49ers rookie running back in his NFL debut since Elijah Mitchell in 2021, 2 ½ years before McCaffrey’s arrival. Mitchell went on to run for 963 yards that season; before him, the last 49ers rookie to reach 500 yards was Frank Gore in 2005.

The Niners are learning Black isn’t the typical rookie.

“I’d like to say it’s what I expect, but it’s not always what you get,” Shanahan said. “But, that’s how he was advertised coming out of college. I do think he’s rare in terms of his maturity and just how much of a pro he’s seemed like since Day 1.”

Black missed some time in training camp with a groin issue but didn’t miss a beat.

“He came in and since Day 1, he’s been on his P’s and Q’s,” McCaffrey said. “So good to where you can trust him doing anything.”

They brought another running back with them to Australia, their fifth-round pick from 2024, Jordan James, but left him on the inactive list after what they saw from Black in practice.

“There wasn’t a time that, all right, Christian got this rep, it’s a play for Christian, and his backup won’t know what to do,” Shanahan said. “He showed during the week how attentive he was, how much he knew, how much he was studying whether he got to rep or not.”

Clearly, the 49ers don’t want McCaffrey to take the same pounding he did last season. They instituted a plan that basically permitted him to take two weeks off from training camp.

He can’t do that in the regular season. That’s where Black comes in.

“I think that’s a big part of it,” Kubiak said. “There’s two guys that are going to carry the ball that are a problem. Aside from wanting a rotation with Christian, to kind of spare him a little bit in the game, we just want to get Kaelon touches. He’s a good player. He deserves touches.”