It's no secret that the San Francisco 49ers have been forced to fight through an absurd amount of injuries this season, losing their top two defensive players for the year in Nick Bosa and Fred Warner, while also watching offensive stars Brock Purdy, George Kittle, and Ricky Pearsall, among others, miss large chunks of time.
Oddly enough, however, one who hasn't missed a single game is none other than three-time Pro Bowl running back Christian McCaffrey, who missed all but four games a season ago and had missed 37 of a possible 84 regular-season games over the last five years coming into this 2025 campaign.
And the Niners are obviously thrilled with McCaffrey's healthy status, as the 29-year-old has easily been one of the top offensive players in the league this season.
And he's undoubtedly the frontrunner in the NFL Comeback Player of the Year race, a position he solidified with a strong performance in San Francisco's 41-22 win over the Arizona Cardinals this past Sunday, a victory that put the 49ers back in the top seven of the NFC playoff picture, by the way.
While CMC failed to hit the 100-yard mark as a rusher for the third time this season, earning his third-highest total at 81 yards, it was easily his most efficient game on the ground, as he needed just 13 carries to get there, thus averaging a season-high 6.2 yards per attempt. He also added 40 receiving yards on five receptions. Oh, and we should probably mention that he scored three total touchdowns, two as a runner and one as a receiver.
Christian McCaffrey is on pace for one of the best seasons of his career
With his performance against the Cards, McCaffrey now has 707 rushing yards and 732 receiving yards on the year. As such, his 1,439 total yards from scrimmage lead the NFL, with Indianapolis Colts running back Jonathan Taylor sitting in close second with 1,399. Yes, the Niners have played one more game than the Colts, who were on a bye this past week, so it's certainly going to be a tight race down the stretch. Nevertheless, McCaffrey's accomplishments thus far have been phenomenal and have certainly helped save San Francisco's season.
With his three touchdowns, McCaffrey, who had just three total scores in the Niners' first five outings, now has 11, tying him with Josh Jacobs for the second-most in the league. Taylor leads the way with an absurd 17 in 10 games.
If the Stanford alum can continue to stay healthy and maintain the 130.8 total yards per game he's averaged through the 49ers' first 11 games, he'll end his season with 2,224 yards, which would mark the second-highest total of his career and just over 200 more than the 2,023 he amassed in his Offensive Player of the Year-winning campaign in 2023. The highest figure he's reached was 2,392 back in 2019 with the Carolina Panthers.
Furthermore, McCaffrey continues to be on pace to reach both 1,000 rushing yards and 1,000 receiving yards, which would represent just the fourth instance in NFL history in which a player has achieved this feat. However, as that 2019 season already made him a member of this exclusive club, the other two being 49ers legend Roger Craig (1985) and Marshall Faulk (1999), he would obviously become the first to accomplish this rare feat twice.
So, again, McCaffrey is clearly the frontrunner in the CPOY race. It's not that others don't deserve to be in the conversation, as Dak Prescott, Aidan Hutchinson, Daniel Jones, and maybe even Stefon Diggs could be considered, but CMC should end up with that hardware come February.