The MVP of the 49ers Offense

So many worthy contenders.
In this story:

At least five players could make a case that they're the 49ers' most valuable offensive player.

Brandon Aiyuk is a contender. He's having the best season of his career and leading the 49ers with 956 receiving yards.

George Kittle also is a contender. He's having his best season since 2019 and leading the 49ers with 9 touchdown catches.

Trent Williams is a third contender. He's the best left tackle in football.

But the two main contenders are players who were midseason additions to the lineup: Christian McCaffrey and Brock Purdy.

McCaffrey has been one of the best midseason trades ever. He has carried a huge workload, stayed healthy and gained a whopping 1,131 yards from scrimmage and scored 9 touchdowns in just 10 games with the 49ers. And their record is 9-1 in that span. McCaffrey has made the entire offense better.

But he couldn't overcome Jimmy Garoppolo's limitations -- that's why the 49ers scored a measly 13 points with McCaffrey in a win against the Saints.

Garoppolo played three games with McCaffrey, and during that stretch 49ers scored 38 points against a lifeless Cardinals team at high altitude, but also scored just 22 points against the Chargers and a mere 13 points against New Orleans.

Purdy has played five games with McCaffrey, and during this period the 49ers have scored at least 33 points four times. The one time they scored fewer than 33 was in Seattle when they scored 20 partially because Purdy had injured his oblique just four days prior.

Purdy has made McCaffrey and the offense unstoppable.

When Garoppolo was the quarterback, McCaffrey averaged just 4.2 yards per carry. Since Purdy has taken over, McCaffrey is averaging 5.1 yards per carry. That shows Purdy's impact.

Purdy is the 49ers' offensive MVP.


Published
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.