The 49ers have made a major trade for a running back who is great when healthy. In recent years, however, he’s been not healthy more often than he’s been healthy.
And so the 49ers are rolling the dice on Christian McCaffrey staying healthy. It’s a calculated risk. It’s a gamble. On Friday, G.M. John Lynch was asked that fairly obvious question.
“Everything is a gamble,” Lynch told reporters. “Hopefully, it’s a well thought-out gamble, and you put a lot of thought into it. I know we have. I’d also say, I believe like a lot of really good players, he’s a lot more than just a running back. I think he’s a perfect player for the way Kyle [Shanahan] and our offensive staff does things. I think he brings a lot more than just running back skills. He’s an incredibly accomplished receiver. He’s got tremendous feel. He can play with speed, he can play with power, he can play with quickness. He can do it all. And we’ve seen that firsthand playing against him. You’ve seen it right up to the last game he played. He’s an excellent football player. There’s no denying that and we like adding guys like that to the mix.”
Lynch is right. But using McCaffrey like a running back is what can get him injured. Running between the tackles means running into a scrum of large, strong men who will try to hit the ballcarrier from any and every angle, violently striking any and every body part.
Lynch was asked whether the 49ers discussed McCaffrey’s wear and tear through five-plus seasons of football, and his workload moving forward.
“We discussed it all,” Lynch said. “First of all, you have to look at his history coming out of Stanford, really a pristine health record. The last couple of years have been rough, but it really felt like this year he had reestablished that health. I’ve been there in my own career. I started off and struggled to stay on the field then went eight, nine years without missing a game. Sometimes there’s those ebbs and flows. You can never have complete certainty on that, that’s beyond our control, but we try to make the best decision we can. This guy has played a lot of football this year, really good football throughout his career and he’s an extremely versatile player. He’s an explosive football player, he’s a smart football guy. I can go on and on. He checks all the boxes.”
But there’s a difference between being a safety (as Lynch was) and being a running back. Running backs get hit. Running backs get hurt. It’s why it makes little sense to use a top-10 draft pick on a running back in the first place (as the Panthers did on McCaffrey), given the ever-present risk of injury.
By giving up four draft picks and taking on the balance of a market-value deal, you’re damn right the 49ers are making a gamble. And if it blows up, it won’t matter that it could have worked out. All that will matter is that it didn’t.
Just like the decision to not draft Patrick Mahomes. And the decision to not wait for Kirk Cousins but to trade for Jimmy Garoppolo. And the decision to not sign Tom Brady. And the decision to invest three first-round picks and a third-round pick in a quarterback who suffered a season-ending broken ankle in his second game as the full-time starter.