It was early the morning of Oct. 21 when Kyle Shanahan bumped into his assistant head coach, Anthony Lynn, at the 49ers’ practice facility. The Christian McCaffrey trade had happened hours earlier, and the place was buzzing. But for the time being, Shanahan figured his excitement needed tempering since he had to prepare for the Chiefs, and McCaffrey, presumably, wasn’t going to play.
Then, Lynn recounted his conversation from overnight with McCaffrey’s parents.
He’d called Christian’s dad, Ed, Lynn’s old teammate with the Broncos, to tell him just how excited he was about the deal. He also wound up talking to Ed’s wife, Lisa, who in turn told Lynn just before saying goodbye that she’d see him that weekend.
“Are you gonna help him move in?” Lynn asked.
“No,” Lisa answered, “I’m coming to watch him play.”
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As it turns out, as Lisa was telling Lynn that she was coming to the game against the Chiefs, Christian was talking to Shanahan and GM John Lynch, only wanting to know how quickly they could get him an iPad with the San Francisco playbook. Which is probably why his mom didn’t miss a beat, and didn’t have the genuine sense of wonder Lynn did in relaying the story.
“And that was like five hours after we traded for him,” Shanahan said from the 49ers’ team plane on the tarmac at LAX late Sunday afternoon. “So me knowing their mindset coming in, that was pretty cool. It was like, All right, go for it. And that was just the way he attacked it. Those 48 hours were unbelievable. We gave him a lot of the plays we told him to prepare for, and there were a few that we didn’t tell him to prepare for that he was good to go with and figured out in the game.
“Now going forward to this week, it’s like he knows everything.”
It sure looked like it Sunday. McCaffrey, in his ninth full day with the 49ers, put on full display why his parents had very little doubt he’d find his way onto the field two days after officially joining Shanahan’s team. He also showed why both teams on that field were in such hot pursuit of his rights a week and a half earlier. And in doing that, he helped San Francisco, and Shanahan, avenge a particularly painful loss from 10 months ago.
Now the 49ers’ convincing 31–14 win over the Rams was, for sure, about more than just San Francisco’s new tailback. What McCaffrey did Sunday—in becoming the first player in 17 years to register a touchdown pass, run and catch all in the same game, and leading his team in catches (eight), carries (18), rushing yards (94), yards from scrimmage (149), passer rating (158.3) and, of course, touchdowns accounted for—was show the world just how good the 49ers could be once he really gets comfortable back in California.
And if the pace he’s been on is any indication, that should be pretty soon.
We’ve got an eventful, if not overly dramatic, Week 8 to cover in this week’s MMQB column. Inside the column this morning, you’ll get …
• In Three Deep, a look at how Nathaniel Hackett tweaked the Broncos this week, the way Geno Smith’s Seahawks keep getting better and Terry McLaurin’s big homecoming.
• In Ten Takeaways, Marcus Mariota’s view on Atlanta’s revival, Devin McCourty’s voice on all things New England, Ben Jones’s take on the Titans’ toughness and some more trade-deadline nuggets.
• In Six From Saturday, a dive into the good and bad of Kentucky QB Will Levis.
And much, much more. But we’re starting with the NFC West’s signature rivalry of the past half decade, and the new star to enter that fray.
The well-documented history between the Shanahans and the McCaffreys made it so there were never going to be many surprises after Kyle acquired Christian—even if his ability to get himself up to speed was eye-opening. By now, you’ve probably heard that the coach, as a teenager, used to babysit his new tailback, and that Kyle looked up to, and modeled himself after, Ed as a Broncos ball boy and aspiring high school receiver, to the point where he wore No. 87 in college in tribute to him.
And if you follow this along those lines, the trade can also tell you what you need to know about where the 49ers are now, in the risk they were willing to take on McCaffrey vs. where they were when they weren’t. The 49ers actually had another shot to get McCaffrey before, holding the second pick in the 2017 draft.
Neither Shanahan nor Lynch gave much consideration to taking him there, and in no way was that an indictment on the Stanford product’s ability.
“No, it wasn’t [tempting] at all at the time,” Shanahan said. “John and I saw it the same way; we thought we were a ways away and we wanted to build the team. We were so committed to building a defensive line, so that’s what we were really trying to do and looking to do. So, I mean, we obviously loved Christian, but we were just still going in a different direction with how we were building our team at the time.”
So the 49ers traded down one spot, took Solomon Thomas third, and McCaffrey went five picks later to the Panthers. Thomas is now on his third team (the Jets), and San Francisco has built a top-of-the-league roster despite missing on both of its first-round picks (Reuben Foster was the other one) that year.
And having that roster, one whose core got San Francisco to a Super Bowl two and a half years ago, and to another NFC title game in January, was wholly a factor in why the idea of getting McCaffrey this year was so much more palatable to the brass than it was five years ago.
“We’ve been all-in on this group for a while,” Shanahan continued. “I feel like, since our third year, where we started in trying to put this team together in those first two years that were tough. To get to the Super Bowl that third year and come so close, we tried real hard to keep it together these last couple years. I mean, just to play Kansas City last week, and I feel like we had almost half our team [from the Super Bowl against the Chiefs] there, that’s a big deal three years later.
“It’s hard to keep those guys, and we had to lose some people—making real tough decisions to do that—but we’ve done things in order to keep three instead of losing one. That shows how much we do believe in these guys. And in order to do that, you gotta add some new guys, too, who gotta step up and make plays.”
And in adding McCaffrey to their roster, the 49ers kept him away from the Rams, who won the division and conference last year, beating San Francisco for the first time in three years to punch their ticket to the Super Bowl, where they won the franchise’s second title.
The 49ers were the first to call the Panthers on McCaffrey after Carolina fired Matt Rhule on Oct. 10, and were part of a three-team race—along with the Rams and Bills—as the negotiations drove to a conclusion in the 48 hours (or so) leading up to the trade. At the wire, the Bills remained back—asking to remain in the loop, but declining to make a hard offer, and balking at the price—which crystallized the sweepstakes as another Rams vs. 49ers battle.
The Rams’ final offer wound up being second- and third-round picks in 2023, fourth- and fifth-round picks in ’24 and Cam Akers. The 49ers bested that with second-, third- and fourth-round picks in ’23, and a fifth-rounder in ’24, with the Panthers preferring the ’23 fourth-rounder.
“Nothing with us is ever just Go get him, because I’m not looking at it where we needed one player or anything like that,” Shanahan said. “We really wanted him. We thought he could really help us, and we felt fortunate that we had an opportunity to get a player like that. But it had so much to do not just with this year but also next year. We wanted to make sure this was a decision that wasn’t just gonna help us now but we thought could be smart going forward. And so that’s what made us look into it, and we got pretty close.
“And then when you’re competing against your competition in your division, that’s stuff that maybe gets you a little bit over the hump—not only just us but also them a little bit.”
And, in the end, the 49ers gave just a little bit more.
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I can remember, like Shanahan can, when the offense his dad, Mike, ran seemed to pull 1,000-yard rushers off an assembly line in Denver, from Terrell Davis to Olandis Gary to Mike Anderson to Reuben Droughns and Clinton Portis. The trend continued for Kyle with guys such as Arian Foster and Alfred Morris.
So the first question I asked Shanahan on Sunday: Why, after so many years of making it work with overlooked, undervalued talents at every turn at that position, would he feel compelled to go in on a guy at the top of that market?
“With Christian, more than anything, it’s not just like adding a running back,” Shanahan said. “It’s adding a Pro Bowl offensive player. That’s how I see Deebo [Samuel]. I mean, Deebo’s definitely a receiver. But it’s what he does for our offense—whatever’s needed based off what other teams are doing. And I think Christian’s real comparable in that way. We have had some success with backs that aren’t real high draft picks or aren’t necessarily what people would vote as Pro Bowlers.
“But when you do get one of those backs, it’s a big difference. Christian just has a way of doing that, not just running-wise but just all ways. When you can do that in all those different types of ways, you don’t have to force things to him. You kind of let the offense come a little naturally to him, to the quarterback, and that takes pressure off everyone.”
It certainly worked against the Rams on Sunday, almost right away, and consistently in ways that highlighted just how quickly McCaffrey has assimilated himself.
The first big pop came on a second-and-8 early in the second quarter, with the 49ers trailing 7–0 and holding the ball at the Rams’ 34. On the play, McCaffrey fell behind Jimmy Garoppolo running a swing route, Garoppolo threw him the ball laterally, McCaffrey collected it, drew the defenders in, then launched a strike to Brandon Aiyuk, who was wide open in the end zone.
Shanahan called that play, because it looked very similar to a play the Panthers ran on the 49ers with McCaffrey two weeks earlier, with the wrinkle of McCaffrey having the option to throw built in.
“The key is when you catch it, you gotta tuck it away and look like you’re running,” Shanahan said. “There actually was a Cover 2 look, so I almost called a timeout before the play because that’s not the best look for it. But if you have a guy who’s a threat to run with it? He ran that play against them I’d say about three or four times when he played them two weeks ago when he was with Carolina, and he’s tough to tackle.
“So when you throw the balls like those guys quickly, no matter how deep the people are, they better get up there to tackle him, because he’s a threat. And then he had the poise to pull it back and throw it. It was real similar to the play that we did last year when we handed it off to Deebo, and they came up pretty hard, and he threw it to Jauan Jennings.”
That one tied the game at 7 and kept the 49ers close headed into the half—they trailed 14–10 at the break.
The next one changed the game completely, on a third-and-2 from the Rams’ 9 with less than two minutes left in the third quarter. At the snap, McCaffrey trickled into the flat to give Garoppolo a viable checkdown option and then sensed opportunity and an opening for a big play down the sideline.
“He was a decoy on the play; he went out wide to the right, and we were trying to throw to someone to the left,” Shanahan said. “It was the wrong coverage for it, and then Jimmy went to the other people in the progression to the right, and they were all covered. And then he was looking for Christian just as an outlet, with real good protection, the fact that he could just get to his outlet was good. It should’ve been in the flat, but the guys kind of stepped up where Christian was, and then he just turned it down the sideline.
“The two were kind of on the same page, and it was just really good awareness. It was great protection. It was great for Jimmy to see it and make that throw. And it was great coming down with the catch.”
It also made the score 17–14, and the 49ers never looked back. San Francisco went on a six-play, 58-yard drive next with McCaffrey getting the ball on four of its six snaps, registering a spectacular 24-yard run to set up a one-yard touchdown plunge to make it 24–14 with 12:07 left. The 49ers scored again on their next drive leaning on McCaffrey’s three carries, Garoppolo finding Ross Dwelley for 56 yards, then George Kittle for a seven-yard touchdown to complete a five-play, 73-yard march.
That made it 31–14 with less than seven minutes left and, for all intents and purposes, ended it, getting the 49ers back to .500 at 4–4.
The one extra piece to Sunday’s win was it came at SoFi Stadium, the same place where the 49ers were 60 minutes, and really just 15, from making it to a second Super Bowl in three years.
“That was a tough thing to stomach last year, being up 10 points there in the fourth, when the opportunities were there for us to take it, and we missed them. That brought up a lot of emotions about three weeks ago before we played them, and we were able to come out and play good there. So some of those things went away for this game, just because we had played them already this year. But you get back in that stadium, and they come back.
“It was so cool to see all our fans there again, just like in the playoffs last year. We were down at half, but to get that lead there in the third quarter and to be up like we were and to make the plays that we didn’t quite make last time, and to watch the guys do it, I thought all three phases did, a bunch of different guys did. It was really cool to leave that field a lot more comfortable than we did the last time.”
And now, with the bye coming, and a chance for the 49ers to get healthy, we should really get an idea of what McCaffrey can do to take them to the next level.
Getting Samuel back will give Shanahan two weapons with flexibility to line up all over the formation, and make sorting out who goes where as the 49ers break the huddle that much more difficult to manage. Add in Kittle, who moves around quite a bit himself, and you have a bona fide nightmare scenario for defensive coordinators.
“That’s one of the most exciting things about pairing Christian here—it’s just the guys to pair him with,” Shanahan said. “We got a quarterback who can distribute the ball, and when you say guys like you just did, especially with Deebo, I mean Deebo’s a receiver, and he’s a threat at receiver, but he can be a running back at any time, too. It’s pretty cool to have a running back who’s a threat as a running back, who can be a threat as a receiver also. So however you mix them up, there should be a guy that causes problems in both spots.”
Then, of course, there’s the personal part of it for Shanahan. And the interesting truth is that he and Christian didn’t really know each other that well until the past few weeks—Kyle was much closer with Ed and Lisa than he had been with Christian, having also coached Christian’s older brother Max briefly while Max was a receiver on his practice squad.
That said, he could have guessed the type of person he was getting and, 10 days in, it looks like he’d have gotten that guess right.
“You know what type of person you’re dealing with,” Shanahan said. “You know how important it is to him. You know he’s been planning for this moment since he could remember, which is very similar to how I’d look at things, too. It’s neat to have him on our team.”
And, as Shanahan quickly found out, it may be even neater to see where these two can take that team next.
