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SI: 49ers RB Christian McCaffrey will Win Comeback Player of the Year

From 2022 to 2023, the 49ers' most valuable player was Christian McCaffrey and it wasn't even close.
Grant Cohn|
Nov 10, 2024; Tampa, Florida, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (23) warms up before a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Raymond James Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images
Nov 10, 2024; Tampa, Florida, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (23) warms up before a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Raymond James Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images | Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

From 2022 to 2023, the 49ers' most valuable player was Christian McCaffrey and it wasn't even close.

He made everyone else better. He made Jimmy Garoppolo better. He made Brock Purdy better. He made Brandon Aiyuk better. He made Kyle Shanahan better. Then, he missed eight games last season with bilateral Achilles tendonitis. When he returned, he was a shell of himself. And after just four games, he tore his PCL and missed the rest of the season.

Now, McCaffrey says he's fully healthy with zero restrictions. And that's why Conor Orr projects McCaffrey to win the Comeback Player of the Year Award.

"The 49ers had 11 picks in this year’s draft and did not even touch the offensive side of the ball until Round 4," writes Orr. "While the 49ers did select a running back (Oregon’s Jordan James in the fifth round), the team’s lack of urgency surrounding the position—in addition to San Francisco trading Jordan Mason to the Vikings—signals that there have been some positive early returns on McCaffrey’s health."

If McCaffrey stays healthy all season, he certainly could win this award. But just because he feels good now doesn't mean he'll hold up. Achilles tendonitis is an overuse injury. The more he plays, the more likely the injury pops back up. So the 49ers will have to manage his workload, something they did not do last season when he finally returned.

And McCaffrey will have to show that he still has something left in the tank. His entire game is based on speed and quickness, and last season he had neither. He topped out at 17.4 miles per hour and forced just five missed tackles in four games. The previous season when he was the Offensive Player of the Year, he forced 60 missed tackles.

I think a quarterback such as Dak Prescott or Trevor Lawrence has a better chance to win Comeback Player of the Year than a run-down running back.

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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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