One of the core issues for the San Francisco 49ers last season was the inconsistent health of running back Christian McCaffrey. He missed the first nine weeks with Achilles tendinitis, and then sustained a knee injury in Week 13 after his return.
The 49ers offense struggled without their offensive focal point and keeping him healthy in 2025 should be one of their biggest goals. However, preserving McCaffrey by limiting his role isn’t part of the plan for 49ers new offensive coordinator Klay Kubiak.
“You’re always cognizant of the reps you’re putting on guys, especially in practice, when we do that with Christian all the time, we monitor his reps and you have to be smart when you’re in games,” Kubiak said in a press conference Thursday. “You have to be cognizant of how much they’re out there. Christian’s a really hard guy to take off the field for a lot of reasons. One, because he is a great player, but two, because he does not want to come out, sometimes there’s a battle. And so it’s just you have to balance those things out, you got to be aware of it, sometimes you got to pull him off the field every now and then. But that’s part of what makes him a great player is he’s so competitive and he wants to be out there, but it’s on us as coaches to try to do the best we can to balance it out.”
In 2023 when McCaffrey was the offensive player of the year he racked up 339 touches and played 81 percent of the offensive snaps. Last season in the three games immediately after returning from his Achilles injury he saw action on 88 percent, 94 percent and 82 percent of the team’s plays. The fourth game was when he got hurt and he played just 25 percent of the snaps.
Balancing how to keep McCaffrey at maximum effectiveness while also keeping him healthy will be one of the biggest challenges facing Kubiak and the 49ers offensive coaching staff this season.