With the Seattle Seahawks taking a 27-10 win over the Carolina Panthers this past Sunday afternoon, the San Francisco 49ers knew heading into their primetime matchup with the Chicago Bears on Sunday Night Football that they needed a win to make their Week 18 matchup with Seattle a winner-take-all affair for both the NFC West and the No. 1 seed in the conference.
And while the NFC North champion Bears certainly didn't make things easy, the Niners were able to get the win they needed, surviving a wild back-and-forth battle to take a 42-38 victory.
One of the big reasons San Francisco secured the crucial win, of course, was the play of Christian McCaffrey, who tallied a season-high 140 rushing yards and a touchdown on just 23 carries, while adding another 41 yards on four receptions.
With his 181 total yards, the four-time Pro Bowler surpassed the 2,000-yard mark for the third time in his career.
But if McCaffrey wants to make NFL history by becoming the first player ever to tally 1,000 rushing yards and 1,000 receiving yards in the same season on two separate occasions, he'll need a big game on the receiving side of things against the Seahawks this Saturday night.
Christian McCaffrey needs 110 receiving yards to join the 1k/1k club for the 2nd time
The fact that McCaffrey is already part of the 1,000/1,000 club is impressive, as it currently only has two other members.
The first to achieve the feat was none other than Roger Craig, who recorded 1,050 rushing yards on 214 carries and 1,016 receiving yards on 92 receptions for the 49ers in 1985. The second to do so was Marshall Faulk, who amassed 1,381 rushing yards on 253 carries and 1,048 receiving yards on 87 receptions for the Super Bowl-winning St. Louis Rams in 1999.
And then there was McCaffrey, who tallied 1,387 rushing yards on 287 attempts and caught 116 passes for 1,005 yards for the Carolina Panthers in 2019.
As for this season, the 29-year-old hit the 1,000-yard mark on the ground in the Niners' Week 16 win over the Indianapolis Colts and upped his season total to 1,179 rushing yards with his performance against the Bears.
On the receiving side of things, however, McCaffrey currently stands at 890 yards, which obviously means he'll need 110 against the Hawks to become the first two-time member of this exclusive club. And that could be a problem, seeing as he's only reached triple digits as a receiver five times in his career, the last time coming during the aforementioned 2019 season with Carolina.
The closest McCaffrey has come to the number he needs on Saturday was his 92-yard outing against the Jacksonville Jaguars back in Week 4. In the Niners' first matchup with Seattle in the season opener, the four-time All-Pro tallied 73 receiving yards on nine catches. So, it'll certainly be a challenge.
The win is obviously the most important thing for the 49ers, but if McCaffrey making a little more history comes along with it as an added bonus, so be it.