49ers RB Christian McCaffrey's Odds to Win Offensive Player of the Year

If McCaffrey stays healthy, there's no reason to think he won't win, because the 49ers give him the ball so much.

Grant Cohn | May 18, 2024

Feb 11, 2024; Paradise, Nevada, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (23) / Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports

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San Francisco 49ers

Last season, Christian McCaffrey won the Offensive Player of the Year Award and finished third in the MVP voting -- one spot ahead of Brock Purdy. McCaffrey was the engine of the 49ers offense, the player every team built their game plan to stop. Can he repeat his outstanding performance this year?

The oddsmakers think he will.

McCaffrey currently is the odds-on favorite to repeat as the Offensive Player of the Year, according to BetUS, which gives McCaffrey +700 odds to win the award. Tyreek Hill has +800 odds, Justin Jefferson has +900 odds, CeeDee Lamb has +900 odds and Ja'Marr Chase has +1200 odds. So McCaffrey is the only running back who seems to have a legitimate chance to win.

And if McCaffrey stays healthy, there's no reason to think he won't win, because the 49ers give him the ball so much. He led the NFL in touches last season with 339, or 21.2 per game. Then in the playoffs, the 49ers have him 78 touches, or 26 per game. He was both their leading rusher and their leading receiver in the postseason. Because when the pressure mounts, Kyle Shanahan leans on McCaffrey. Every time.

Unfortunately for McCaffrey, in June he'll turn 28, which is a bit old for a running back. The odds are against him making it through another full season uninjured at his age, especially considering how much the 49ers use him. Winning back-to-back Offensive Player of the Year Awards would be impressive but ultimately unlikely.

Published May 18, 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.