Running back Christian McCaffrey finally looked healthy and explosive in a late-season 49ers game against the Buffalo Bills.
Then, he sustained a season-ending knee injury midway through the Week 13 game.
More than four months later, the 49ers sound optimistic about the chances of McCaffrey returning to a significant offensive role for the 2025 NFL season.
“Christian is healthy,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said last week at the NFL Annual Meeting in Palm Beach, Florida. “He’s doing great.”
McCaffrey was voted the 2023 NFL Offensive Player of the Year after he produced 2,023 yards and 21 touchdowns from scrimmage as a rusher and receiver.
Last summer, McCaffrey was sidelined early in training camp with bilateral Achilles tendinitis. He made his season debut on Nov. 10 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers but experienced little success in his first three games back.
In his fourth game, against the Bills, McCaffrey looked sharp, piling up 58 yards on his first six carries. But he was tripped up at the end of an 18-yard run and landed hard on his right knee. He sustained a season-ending injury to the posterior cruciate ligament, which did not require surgery.
San Francisco 49ers
The knee injury is not expected to have any carryover impact on McCaffrey’s 2025 season, but the 49ers consider themselves in the market to add another running back in this month's NFL draft.
“You always hope to address it every year,” Shanahan said of the position. “Of course, we’re set with McCaffrey, but every single year we’ve gone through this except for two years, we’ve gone through four running backs. Most teams do, so you always got to be prepared for that.”
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The 49ers traded backup running back Jordan Mason to the Minnesota Vikings this spring. San Francisco retained Mason’s rights with a second-round tender of $5.4 million, which it never intended to pay. It enabled them to trade Mason and the team’s sixth-round (187th overall) pick to the Vikings for their fifth-round (160th overall) draft choice and a 2026 sixth-round draft choice.
The 49ers appear to have a capable backup in Isaac Guerendo, who gained 420 yards and four touchdowns on 84 carries for a 5.0-yard rushing average. He also passed up two touchdowns when he took a knee at the end of long runs to enable San Francisco to run out the clock to secure victories.
“Isaac is a big-play guy who can run hard,” Shanahan said. “I was impressed with how tough he competed as a rookie, how hard he ran. He ran harder as the year went on.”
Guerendo is considered a pass-catching threat out of the backfield, as he caught 15 passes for 152 yards on 16 targets as a rookie.
The 49ers also re-signed veteran running back and special-teams player Patrick Taylor Jr. to a one-year contract in the offseason.
“We got Isaac in there working, and we’re pumped to get Patrick back,” Shanahan said. “And we’ll see if we can add someone in the draft. We’d like to every year.”
The 49ers have 11 scheduled draft picks, including eight in the top 160 selections.
