Christian McCaffrey, the 49ers’ dynamic running back, won the AP Offensive Player of the Year Award.
In his first full season in San Francisco, McCaffrey led the NFL with both 1,459 rushing yards and 21 total touchdowns. As quarterback Brock Purdy steered the 49ers offense, McCaffrey revved its engine.
McCaffrey received the award at the annual NFL Honors event, which was hosted in Las Vegas. Tyreek Hill, Lamar Jackson and CeeDee Lamb also received votes.
The Offensive Player of the Year award has become a runners-up trophy to the best quarterback; the last non-quarterback named Most Valuable Player was Adrian Peterson in 2012.
With how the NFL has evolved into more of a passing game, running backs have generally been devalued. Even though McCaffrey is an exception because of his versatility and playmaking ability, he still didn’t get MVP recognition.
“To be an MVP as a running back, I think you’ve got to have 2,000 yards or a thousand-thousand maybe,” McCaffrey told reporters Wednesday. “Bunch of touchdowns. I think to be an MVP, you’ve got to have some quarterbacks have down years.”
Despite the MVP award being so quarterback-driven, McCaffrey said he wouldn’t change the awards system.
“Every year is different,” McCaffrey said. “The quarterback is the most important position on the field — they touch the ball on every play, they get the most total yards of anyone, the offenses run through them. So it makes sense to me. If a running back or a receiver or someone else has a spectacular year, I look back to when Derrick Henry rushed for 2,000 yards. That was as special as they come. Worthy of MVP talks…If a skill player has a spectacular year like that, that’s kind of an iconic year in the record books, then yeah they should definitely be considered if a quarterback doesn’t have a valid argument.”
McCaffrey’s 1,459 rushing yards this season were nearly 300 more than Henry, who tallied the second-most.
Before last season’s trade deadline, the 49ers traded four draft picks for McCaffrey to Carolina, where the running back spent the first six years of his career. The bold acquisition instantly worked out, with McCaffrey taking Kyle Shanahan’s offense to the next level.
Shanahan knew McCaffrey since he was a little kid, when the coach idolized his dad, Ed, as a Broncos receiver. Shanahan’s dad coached Ed, and Shanahan’s sister would babysit young Christian.
“I just knew he had a bunch of crazy boys,” Shanahan said of Ed. “And they all played tackle football outside the games together, killed each other all the time. It was hard to tell the difference (between them).”
Under Shanahan, McCaffrey set career highs in touchdowns and rushing yards. He earned his first All-Pro selection since 2018. And, for the first time in his career, he reached the Super Bowl. In fact, McCaffrey’s last winning season before joining the Niners was his rookie year, in 2017.
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At one point this season, McCaffrey had scored a touchdown in 17 straight games, matching the longest streak in NFL history. His nose for the end zone carried into the playoffs, where he scored a pair of touchdowns in each of San Francisco’s comeback wins to reach Super Bowl LVIII.
McCaffrey joins Justin Jefferson, Cooper Kupp, Michael Thomas and Henry as the past five Offensive Player of the Year winners. The Pro Football Writers Association of America also gave him their Offensive Player of the Year award, and FedEx named him the Ground Player of the Year.
With a big performance in the Super Bowl, McCaffery could add even shinier hardware to his trophy case.