Projecting the 49ers' Running Back Depth Chart

If Elijah Mitchell is healthy, he will be the backup running back. But he hasn't been 100 percent healthy since he entered in the NFL.

Grant Cohn | Jul 11, 2024

Feb 11, 2024; Paradise, Nevada, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Jordan Mason (24) against the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVIII at Allegiant Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports / Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

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San Francisco 49ers

For the past two seasons, Christian McCaffrey has been the 49ers' starting running back and Elijah Mitchell has been their backup.

Obviously, McCaffrey will remain the starter for a while -- he just won the Offensive Player of the Year Award and signed a contract extension through 2027. But who will be his backup?

Mitchell is the favorite because head coach Kyle Shanahan absolutely adores him. He ran for 963 yards in 11 games as a rookie in 2021. He seemed like a quality starter. But knee injuries have limited Mitchell to just 16 games the past two seasons. And in 2023, he averaged a mere 3.7 yards per carry and 2.3 yards per catch. He was not good.

If Mitchell is healthy, he will be the backup running back. But he hasn't been 100 percent healthy since he entered in the NFL. He's a smaller running back who runs like a much bigger man and his body has suffered because of that.

Meanwhile, third-stringer Jordan Mason a big running back who runs like a big running back, and he has performed exceptionally well when given opportunities the past two seasons. In addition, he's a much better receiver than Mitchell -- that was evident during OTAs and minicamp this offseason.

Both Mitchell and Mason are entering the final year of their contracts, so it's important for the 49ers to get the most out of them before they leave next year.

They also have rookie Isaac Guerendo who's extremely fast, but he's a project who probably won't carry the ball much this year. If he plays at all, he probably will return kickoffs because he did that in college.

Published Jul 11, 2024

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.