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Kyle Shanahan Says 49ers RB Christian McCaffrey has Achilles Tendonitis

It sounds like the 49ers are taking every precaution possible to ensure that McCaffrey's Achilles tendonitis won't get worse.

Grant Cohn

Sep 9, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk (44) talks with running back Christian McCaffrey (23) on the sideline during 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 fullback Kyle Juszczyk (44) talks with running back Christian McCaffrey (23) on the sideline during 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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Every day we seem to learn a bit more about Christian McCaffrey's Achilles' injury.

On Monday, we found out that it's severe enough to keep him out of the regular season opener. Today, Kyle Shanahan tells us that the injury is Achilles tendonitis and it's related to a calf injury that McCaffrey suffered in Week 17 last season.

"I know it was a calf then and it's a calf now," Shanahan said on a conference call. "You guys could ask Christian more on that. Definitely, I believe if it was a playoff game, he would've played. But it's not just the calf, it's the Achilles and the Achilles is tendonitis and that stuff comes and goes. When it is acting up, it’s something you’ve got to be very careful about. Christian's very diligent about that stuff. And if it was a playoff game, he made it very clear to me, he believed he could go. But when you hear that type of stuff and it's not a playoff game and it’s Week 1, and especially when you're dealing with the lower extremities like that it, it was a tough decision. But hearing all the words and stuff, in the long run it made it easy.”

It sounds like the 49ers are taking every precaution possible to ensure that McCaffrey's Achilles tendonitis won't get worse. With that in mind, I would not expect McCaffrey to make his return on artificial turf. The smart thing would be to start his season on grass. Which means he could miss the next two games.

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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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