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Have the 49ers Mismanaged Christian McCaffrey's Achilles Tendonitis?

The 49ers' plan for Christian McCaffrey isn't working.

Grant Cohn

Sep 9, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (23) watches injured from the sidelines in the second quarter against the New York Jets at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: David Gonzales-Imagn Images
Sep 9, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (23) watches injured from the sidelines in the second quarter against the New York Jets at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: David Gonzales-Imagn Images / David Gonzales-Imagn Images
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The 49ers' plan for Christian McCaffrey isn't working.

He injured his Achilles in early August and the team shut him down for the preseason. But then he started practicing in early September to get ready for the regular season, and now his Achilles tendonitis seems worse than before considering the 49ers might put him on the Injured Reserve List for at least the next four games.

If McCaffrey had done absolutely no football activities the past month and a half, he probably would be in better shape now than the shape he currently is in. Because it sounds like he may have reaggravated the injury during this Thursday's practice.

In hindsight, it seems the 49ers have been far too aggressive with McCaffrey in his rehabilitation process and now they're finally backing off. Maybe a month on IR will be enough time for McCaffrey's Achilles tendonitis to heal on its own.

But McCaffrey originally injured his Achilles during Week 17 last year. Then he had five months to rest it during the offseason, and that still wasn't enough. He reinjured it a week into training camp. This injury could be a chronic issue that only gets worse over time.

In that sense, the 49ers didn't necessarily mismanage him this offseason, becase these Achilles reaggravations seem unavoidable at this point. If they mismanaged him at all, they did so during the last two seasons when they gave him more touches than any other player in the league and wore him down. The Carolina Panthers did the same thing to McCaffrey earlier in his career and he broke down for two years. Now he's 28.

Adjust your expectations accordingly.

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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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