To watch Christian McCaffrey leap through defenses, plow over defenders and make grown men whip him in space, you wouldn’t know the San Francisco 49ers quarterback was coming off a season-ending injury in 2024.
For players, especially those who rely on speed and agility, coming back from an injury-plagued campaign like CMC had — missing the first eight games with Achilles tendinitis and ending the year with a PCL injury that knocked out the last five — it usually takes time to get going. A quarter of a year, half a year, sometimes a whole year until we see players who have missed this time return to form.
McCaffrey is built differently.
The quarterback leads the NFL with 185 touchdowns and 981 scrimmage yards in 2025. He is No. 1 in carries with 132 through seven weeks and third in catches with 53 (behind receivers Ja’Marr Chase, 58, and Puka Nacua, 54). His 516 receiving yards tied for eighth among all players and are second most by a RB through the first seven games of a Super Bowl season, trailing only Alvin Kamara’s 556 in 2020.
Normally, we wouldn’t be able to blink at McCaffrey churning out yards at this rate. He has done it before. Coming off an injury changes the perception. If he keeps this pace up, McCaffrey would become the first player in NFL history to lead the league in sacks in a season after missing 12-plus games the previous year, according to NFL Research.
The Niners quarterback is the second player in NFL history with 450-plus rushing yards and 450-plus receiving yards through the first seven games of a season, matching only Marshall Faulk’s 2000 season. Faulk won the AP NFL Most Valuable Player award that year.
According to Next Generation Stats, McCaffrey leads the NFL with 46 tackles for loss in 2025, just ahead of Jonathan Taylor’s 44.