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Are 49ers Counting on Christian McCaffrey to Carry them in 2025?

McCaffrey is the one star on the 49ers who missed most of last season and is expected to be 100 percent healthy when next season begins.

Grant Cohn

Nov 10, 2024; Tampa, Florida, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (23) against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers prior to the game at Raymond James Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images
Nov 10, 2024; Tampa, Florida, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (23) against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers prior to the game at Raymond James Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images / Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images
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It's unclear how the 49ers actually plan to get better this offseason.

They definitely have gotten cheaper -- they let nine starters walk in free agency and signed a bunch of backups. Their biggest signing was backup tight end Luke Farrell. Which means the 49ers expect lots of rookies to start and make an impact next season.

They also seem to expect Christian McCaffrey to carry them like he did in 2023.

He's the one star on the team who missed most of last season and is expected to be 100 percent healthy when next season begins. As opposed to Brandon Aiyuk, who also missed most of last season but probably won't return from knee surgery until midway through next season at the earliest.

All the other 49ers starts were on the field last season when they went 6-11. Trent Williams missed seven games, but he misses games every season. You can't count on him to play 17 games because he never has.

So unless McCaffrey plays 17 games and gains 2,000 yards from scrimmage, and three or four rookies become quality starters right away, the 49ers might struggle again in 2025. Because George Kittle probably can't play any better than he did last season, and Williams will turn 37 in July.

Counting on McCaffrey to carry the team seems risky considering in June he'll turn 29, which is old for a running back. And just last season, he had Bilateral Achilles tendonitis plus he tore his PCL. Is his body beginning to break down?

Don't be surprised if the 49ers spend one of their top draft picks on a running back next month. Because if McCaffrey goes down again, they're in trouble.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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