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It is easy, in retrospect, to look at the decision from 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan in last week’s 34-3 rout of the Jaguars and suggest that he did not make the soundest choice when it came to star running back Christian McCaffrey.
McCaffrey, of course, came into the game on a streak of 17 straight games with a touchdown, tying the record of Colts Hall of Famer Lenny Moore. The 49ers were ahead by 31 points with just over five minutes to play when they got the ball on the 10-yard line.
That was when Shanahan had to make a call. He could put McCaffrey back in and have him attempt to break the record. Or he could keep the injury bug at bay and have his star rest safely on the sideline. Shanahan knew there was an X-factor, too—if he didn’t put McCaffrey back in, he would have been shunned by his team.
“I thought about the risk-reward the whole time, and I was actually counting in my head,” Shanahan said on the Tolbert and Copes show on KNBR in San Francisco. “I was estimating like, all right, he’s had over 200 touches. He’s gotten hurt one time this year, and it was when he wasn’t touching the ball.
“So he’s gone 200 times without it, getting hurt, so if I give it to him four more times, what’s the percentages of him getting hurt on one of those four plays versus the percentages of him and the rest of the team never talking to me again if I don’t give him the opportunity?”
Kyle Shanahan: ‘That Takes a Long Time’
And Kyle Shanahan did give Christian McCaffrey the opportunity, but to no avail.
On first down, the 49ers gave McCaffrey the ball on the left side for a run, but he tallied only one yard. On second down, backup quarterback Sam Darnold hit McCaffrey for a short pass, which went six yards down to the 3-yard line. That was followed by a loss of two yards on a McCaffrey run and an incomplete pass to McCaffrey on fourth down.
Four plays, no touchdown. Record streak, over.
Shanahan said it would have been an easy decision to make if it were anything except a multi-game touchdown run.
“I never would have put (Christian McCaffrey) back in there to go after like, a yards thing or something like that,” he said. “But man, when you gotta do that over 18 games, that takes a long time to build up and it’s only been done once.”
Christian McCaffrey: ‘It Means a Lot to Me’
In the end, McCaffrey missed out on the record and had to settle for an otherwise big day. He tallied 95 yards on 16 carries, and added 47 yards on 6 catches, too. Moreover, the 49ers were badly in need of a win, having lost three straight heading into Jacksonville.
“It means a lot to me for them to keep me in at the end of the game there and try to get me that record,” McCaffrey said. “But I’ll take a huge win.”
Chris Foerster, the team’s run-game coordinator, was in favor of Shanahan’s decision, too. He said he understood the risks, but taking a spot in NFL history is worth that risk. He compared it to earlier this season, when Miami scored 70 points and former 49ers assistant Mike McDaniel had the chance to break the league’s scoring record.
“You can always get to the point where you’re like, risk of injury, I get it. I called [Miami Dolphins head coach Mike] McDaniel. I said, dude, you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to break the scoring record. This is an unbelievable record here. I think it’s the right thing to do personally,” Foerster said this week.
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