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ESPN Projects 49ers RB Christian McCaffrey to Have Another Down Season

If Christian McCaffrey bounces back to the player he was two years ago, the 49ers will be really good next season.
Grant Cohn|
Jun 11, 2025; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (23) runs a play from scrimmage during a team OTA at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images
Jun 11, 2025; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (23) runs a play from scrimmage during a team OTA at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images | D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

If Christian McCaffrey bounces back to the player he was two years ago, the 49ers will be really good next season.

Unfortunately for the 49ers, McCaffrey is coming off bilateral Achilles tendonitis and a torn PCL. If he has lost just three percent of the speed, quickness and explosiveness that he had in 2023, he won't be a dominant player.

In fact, ESPN projects McCaffrey to have another down season in 2025.

"A healthy McCaffrey is a wonderful player, as most recently seen in 2023, but the 49ers -- and fantasy managers -- simply cannot count on his attendance," writes ESPN's senior fantasy football writer Eric Karabell. "The 49ers must monitor his workload and hope for the best. This is a bad combination for someone likely to be an early-round draft pick. Perhaps McCaffrey, 29, returns to a high level of performance and carries the 49ers and your fantasy team, but he's been a top-10 RB in only two of the past five seasons."

McCaffrey may have moments of greatness still ahead of him, but he seems like an F1 racecar with lots of miles on it that will break down frequently in the future.

Adjust your expectations accordingly.

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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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