As the NFL playoffs move on and FOMO Carolina Panthers fans watch them for the fifth straight year without their team in the hunt, let me offer a solution:
Root for Christian McCaffrey.
Yes, that also means rooting for San Francisco, and that’s a hard pill to swallow sometimes. But you have to feel happy for McCaffrey these days, who is finally getting to showcase his talents on a team worthy of it.
After spending five-plus years in the NFL purgatory that is the Panthers franchise and playing in only a single playoff game for Carolina — as a rookie in 2017 — McCaffrey finally has a legitimate shot at a Super Bowl ring.
Traded by Carolina in October for four draft picks, McCaffrey has stayed healthy in San Francisco, and has thrived in an offense where he doesn’t have to do everything for his team to have a shot at winning. The 49ers have made the NFL’s Elite Eight and play again Sunday, hosting the Dallas Cowboys in a divisional playoff game (6:30 p.m., Fox Sports).
McCaffrey was a pro’s pro while he was in Charlotte. You have to root for a guy like that, right?
But there’s one caveat: The better the 49ers do, the slightly worse the Carolina Panthers’ picks are that they swapped for him.
Carolina holds San Francisco’s second-, third- and fourth-round picks in 2023. With each 49ers win, those slots become slightly less valuable. (The 2024 fifth-round pick San Francisco also gave to Carolina isn’t affected, nor is Carolina’s first-round pick, which is No. 9 overall).
Still, McCaffrey’s popularity seems to usurp the idea that the Panthers’ second-round pick may drop from, say, No. 55 overall to No. 63. I took an unscientific two-hour Twitter poll the other day asking Carolina fans if they were cheering for McCaffrey to win a Super Bowl ring.
Of the 735 people who responded, 63% said they wanted McCaffrey to win a ring, followed by 24% of fans saying “I don’t care” and 12% saying they wanted McCaffrey to “play well but lose a game.”
Here’s a sampling of some of the fans’ comments, slightly edited for grammar:
— “I think I’ll always root for the guy. He didn’t force a trade and didn’t leave in free agency. He wanted to be a Panther; we’re just such a poorly-run franchise that his trade was necessary to make up for all our other bad moves.”
— “As far as I am concerned CMC is family, and who wants their family to fail?”
— “Carolina never doubted CMC we needed the picks and he was at top of his value. We were lucky to get out of the contract.”
— “I don’t want him winning a Super Bowl this year because that messes up our draft picks.”
— “No question, (he) deserves a ring.”
McCaffrey’s popularity in Charlotte could be attested to every Sunday by the number of No. 22 jerseys in the stands. (It also should be noted that New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones is a Charlotte product who starred at quarterback at Charlotte Latin, and he’s absolutely worth cheering for as well).
Was McCaffrey also boring while he was here? Yes. I’m convinced it was purposeful.
His interviews were often the equivalent of watching paint dry, then repainting the wall and watching that dry, too. He dated a supermodel who posed for Sports Illustrated, is the son of both a three-time NFL Super Bowl winner in Ed McCaffrey and a Stanford soccer player in Lisa Sime McCaffrey, and could play the piano by ear. But it was very rare that he would grant much public discussion of any of that.
That’s OK — that was his prerogative. McCaffrey cared about nothing more than winning, which was his theme in every interview. He never criticized his teammates or coaches publicly. Even when he had a problem with something, he tried to solve it behind closed doors.
In fact, the only negative thing you can really say about CMC while he was here is that he got hurt a lot. His 2020 and 2021 seasons were plagued with various nagging injuries, enough so that he missed 23 out of a possible 33 games.
McCaffrey started this year healthy, though, and has stayed that way. The trade looks like a rare win-win situation.
Statistically, McCaffrey ended up with his third-best season when you add his stats in Carolina and San Francisco together. He scored 13 touchdowns, rushed for 1139 yards and caught 741 yards more worth of passes. He looked worthy of that massive contract once more. Before he got to San Francisco, the 49ers were scoring roughly 20 points per game. Now they’re averaging about 30. In one memorable game against the L.A. Rams, he threw, caught and ran for touchdowns.
The difference is, though, McCaffrey doesn’t have to do all of that for the 49ers to win, as he often did at Carolina. The 49ers have won 11 games in a row. They have so many offensive weapons and such a good defense and head coach that he’s a cog in the machine. An important cog, yes, but a cog nonetheless.
Even though his continued success will mean the Panthers’ draft haul becomes slightly less valuable, I’m rooting for him. You should too.
