49ers Guilty of Wishful Thinking in High-Risk Trade for McCaffrey
Analysis 10/21/22
I understand, on face value, why people are so enthused about the 49ers' trade for running back Christian McCaffrey. But for me, I would not have made the deal for a number of reasons.
From the San Francisco perspective, the biggest is McCaffrey's health and his recent play. In 2018 and '19, he caught 223 passes in Carolina. Think about that: A running back catching 223 passes while also adding more than 2,400 rushing yards over a two-season span. That's as productive as any running back ever.
And what has happened in the two years since? He caught just 54 total passes and missed 23 games and a ton of practice time.
Just a couple of years ago, everybody was excited when Todd Gurley went to Atlanta. And before that, Reggie Bush was supposedly a great acquisition by the Miami Dolphins. And later in his career, Warrick Dunn. The list goes on and on. Running backs that start to get hurt, especially with soft-tissue injuries, which is what McCaffrey has had — I can't even think off the top of my head of a player that came back from that.
By the way, Kyle Shanahan has done this before. If you remember, a year after he arrived in San Francisco in 2018, he signed Jerick McKinnon for what many thought was a huge overpayment — $7.5 million for someone thought of as a backup running back, who, by the way, is not as good as McCaffrey but has the same set of skills. In 2018 and '19, McKinnon never saw the field. In 2020, he played part of the season. He's actually doing a little bit better this season in Kansas City, but running backs starting to get hurt are just a massive risk.
The other part of this is the 49ers have guys like Deebo Samuel, George Kittle and Brandon Aiyuk. They're going to take the ball out of those players' hands to put it more in the hands of McCaffrey, who historically has not had anywhere close to the average yards per pass attempt or rush attempts as the guys like Deebo Samuel, for example.
McCaffrey also is going to an offense that's very running-back friendly. The 49ers traded four draft picks, including one as high as a two, to get a running back who is going to play in a system that almost every running back that's played in has succeeded? They've generally flourished at running back with fourth-round or fifth-round picks. Back in the Mike Shanahan days, Denver had a running back who went for more than 2,000 yards, Terrell Davis, and another, Mike Anderson, who had 1,000-yard seasons, and each was a sixth-round pick.
Could McCaffrey stay healthy and be a great acquisition? Absolutely. But the odds are extremely high in the opposite direction. He could get hurt, miss four games, and then come back at the end of the season, and they make the playoffs. He's back for the playoff run. But we have to remember something: To get to the Super Bowl, which we assume the 49ers think they have a chance to do or they wouldn't make a deal like this — he has to play 15 more games. That's effectively a whole season more than what we're used to the length of his season being. He's already played six, and he's started to miss some practice time this season because of injury.
If McCaffrey from 2019 was put together with Kyle Shanahan, this would be a really dynamic combination. I mean, as good as any I can think of. But that's not what we have here. The player of the last few years is the reality.
So we have a player six games into a season already starting to have a little bit of health issues who's missed most of the last two seasons. He's gone from averaging more than 110 receptions a year to 54 over two seasons. And he's played pretty well so far this season but doesn't look like the guy from 2018. He's got to play 15 more games if they're right that he's a guy that can help them get to and maybe even win a Super Bowl. I just don't see how that's a realistic expectation.
The reality is, it's been three years since we've seen that guy. It's four seasons if we count the part of the season he played. So, at best, this is an extremely risky acquisition by the 49ers.
We haven't even started talking about what the 49ers gave up to get McCaffrey. Jimmy Johnson was the first person who taught the league this: Quantity of draft picks is very important, not just the quality. The 49ers gave up four reasonably high picks to acquire McCaffrey, who's got guaranteed money into next year.
So if McCaffrey does get hurt this year, they're going to be paying a guy a decent amount of money next year who might not have played a full season over three years. This is a move I would have been afraid to make.
I think the 49ers believe they can maybe use McCaffrey moderately during the season, although that's not Kyle's personality. He's a short-term-focused guy, so I don't see them actually doing that. We used to have a term when I was in Philadelphia for this called "wishful thinking." Where you wanted somebody to be what you wanted them to be so badly, you had a tendency to overlook facts; not even opinions or evaluations, you overlooked some facts. In this case, it's who he's been for the last 2 1/2 seasons.
I think the 49ers are a little guilty of wishful thinking. If you put the 2019 version of Christian McCaffrey in that offense, it's dynamic. They probably underpaid if that's what you're going to get. But there's no reason to think they're getting that. I think they've kind of blocked out the negative to be comfortable with doing what they really wanted to do. And they're crossing their fingers.
It's not impossible it turns out positively for them, but it's highly unlikely.