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The 49ers Have the NFL's 12th-Best Running Back Unit per PFF

According to Pro Football Focus, the 49ers' running back unit ranks 12th out of 32 teams this year.
Grant Cohn|
Dec 1, 2024; Orchard Park, New York, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (23) warms up before a game against the Buffalo Bills at Highmark Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark Konezny-Imagn Images
Dec 1, 2024; Orchard Park, New York, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (23) warms up before a game against the Buffalo Bills at Highmark Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark Konezny-Imagn Images | Mark Konezny-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers are a running-back-driven team.

They don't need a great quarterback to go to the Super Bowl -- they proved that with Jimmy Garoppolo and Brock Purdy. But, they do need a great running back. That's what Raheem Mostert was in 2019, and it's what Christian McCaffrey was in 2023.

Now, McCaffrey is 29 -- he might not be great anymore. Which means the 49ers will need to use all of their running backs this year. And according to Pro Football Focus, the 49ers' running back unit ranks 12th out of 32 teams this year.

"The 49ers are one of the hardest teams to project for this list, given Christian McCaffrey’s recent injury history," writes PFF's Dalton Wasserman. "Across 2022 and 2023, he was the NFL’s highest-graded running back. His injuries in 2024 limited him to just 167 snaps and a 71.3 PFF overall grade. McCaffrey is supremely talented, but he enters his age-29 season with more questions than ever.

"Isaac Guerendo did a decent job in spot duty last season, earning a 67.2 PFF rushing grade. The team also added fifth-round rookie Jordan James, who recorded an elite 95.7 PFF rushing grade over the past two seasons at Oregon."

This is a generous grade.

If McCaffrey can't stay healthy anymore, then one of the backups must step up. And while Guerendo flashed potential as an explosive running back who can catch passes, he got injured twice in just 84 carries last season and he never handled a big workload in college.

And while Jordan James performed well in college, he replaced Jordan Mason, who had an elite 90.5 rushing grade in the NFL the past three seasons. Why the 49ers traded him to the Vikings, I'll never know, but the Vikings rank 11th on this list -- one spot above the 49ers.

I'm just saying.

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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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