CHRISTAN MCCAFFREY A 49ER

[49er4life1979]

Niners trade for Christian McCaffrey. Panthers get 2nd, 3rd, and 4th next year. Also get 5th rounder in 2024.

[Jikkle]

What a terrible trade on our part. Way too much to give up for a guy that's injury proned and looks to have lost a step not to mention his contract.

Now I know he's only like a million this season but if you're giving up that much for him obviously he's not a rental.

[Samurai]

It's a lot to give up if he's just a one-year rental. But if he can stay healthy (unlikely given the track record of our training staff), we'd have to trade a lot of salary to keep him next season. But we may have to do that regardless of CMC's status to recoup some draft picks so if we can cut enough tolerable salary to keep him and get a few draft picks back in the process....

[Scoots1994]

Part of his value is that if he didn't come to the 49ers he'd be a Ram.

He's a hell of a talent ... better win a ring now.

[arich35]

Punting one draft is not that big of a deal IMO. We have so much talent that rookies rarely play on this team and we are pretty damn good at finding late draft picks and undrafted guys to fill the little holes we have on the roster.

[CharityStripe34]

Can he throw the ball past 15 yards?

[thesack12]

Its more than I was thinking it would take to get him. But as someone else mentioned, with the Rams also sniffing around on McCaffrey that increased the price the 9ers were willing to pay.

Garoppolo's coming departure this offseason, makes this trade make more sense on several fronts.

1) When Jimmy leaves, that will open up a sizable chunk of cap space
2) 9ers will be awarded compensatory picks when Jimmy signs elsewhere. Which will help re-stock the cupboard
3) Having an elite talent at RB, will be a massive benefit to help take pressure of a neon green Trey Lance

Also of note, the 9ers still have (2) 3rd round picks via compensatories for McDaniel and Mayhew. This coupled with the compensatory picks they will get for Garoppolo, means the cupboard isn't completely bare.

There is also a very good likelihood, that Demeco Ryans will get a HC gig, which would net another 3rd rounder for the 49ers.

So the draft capital given to Carolina here, has been well calculated and thought out.

Another noteworthy thing to consider is the salary cap is expected to balloon significantly. Which if/when that happens, McCaffrey's cap hit past this season, become less concerning.

This also means that the 49ers won't be wasting another 3rd round pick on a crappy RB prospect for the 3rd year in a row. So it kind of saves them from themselves in that regard.

I also LOVE the timing of this trade. We're are heading into playing the Chiefs this week, so we need all the firepower we can get Even a MCaffrey without a shred of knowledge of the playbook helps. Then next week, we have another absolutely crucial game against the Rams. So again we need all the help we can get, and by then Christian should hopefully have a base outline of the system. Then we go into the bye week, which affords McCaffrey (and the offense around him) 2 full weeks to really immerse themselves into learning the system and building chemistry.

As for the football side of the trade, one good thing is he's still only 26 years old. If he can stay healthy moving forward (admittedly a big if) having only played 3 games in 2020 and only 7 in 2021, is actually a good thing for his long term health outlook. The wear and tear on him has certainly been minimized in recent seasons.

I already reflected a lot of other thoughts on what adding McCaffrey might do in another thread. Its more relevant here, so I'll just cut and paste it:

Dude is a pass catching machine, and is something that the 9ers haven't ever really had much of at the RB position under Shanahan. Having a big time receiving threat out of the backfield, could really open up this offense. As you alluded to it would force LB's to spy McCaffrey on every play which would free up things over the middle of the field for Deebo/Aiyuk/Kittle. It would also really catapult the play action game, I mean we're talking about the difference of running play action with Christian McCaffrey and Jeff Wilson. It would further diminish the need to have Deebo line up in the backfield both as a decoy and actually giving him touches back there. Which both opens up the passing game when Deebo goes downfield, and lowers the amount of punishment he takes.

With Elijah Mitchell hopefully coming back in a few weeks, having him around would allow McCaffrey to rotate in and out instead of being a every down, carry the team type of RB. This would help preserve his health. For that matter it would help preserve Mitchell as well, who isn't exactly a picture of health.

We also consistently talk about how Shanahan gets solid production out of no name RB's, which is legitimate. But we have never seen what he can do with a high end RB talent. It would be quite interesting to see what that would look like.

[CrimsonCrew]

The comp picks certainly play into this. The team has two extra third-round picks this year, one extra third-round pick the following year, and I bet they pick up two more third-round picks this offseason (for 2024 and 2025) when Ryans gets a HC gig. That's not even factoring in losing Jimmy and other players. There's only so many mid-round guys who can make the roster, so I get not being all that concerned about moving picks in rounds three through five, but I also want to see the team take as many of those mid-round picks as possible as the hit rate is markedly lower in the later rounds.

One other thing that is worth noting is that last year was an incredibly deep draft because many guys stayed in school due to Covid, so in the late rounds, we were getting guys who might have gone a round or two earlier in a typical year. And we got a ton of them, making seven picks in rounds 3-6. It makes it that much less likely that a later-round pick next year will make the squad, much less contribute. But again, I generally want as many dart throws as possible.

[Warriorfan]

Kyle has missed in 3rbs in the draft while getting value in Mitchell. Seems like a lot to pay for an injury prone rb with mileage.

Kyle's dad was known for finding RB finds.

[Bingo_AlphaMan]

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[CrimsonCrew]

Kyle has missed in 3rbs in the draft while getting value in Mitchell. Seems like a lot to pay for an injury prone rb with mileage.

Kyle's dad was known for finding RB finds.

Kyle is known for RB finds (Mitchell, Mostert, Breida, Wilson). He just keeps insisting on shelling out for RBs who aren't as good as those guys.

[zman1]

Kyle has missed in 3rbs in the draft while getting value in Mitchell. Seems like a lot to pay for an injury prone rb with mileage.

Kyle's dad was known for finding RB finds.

Kyle is known for RB finds (Mitchell, Mostert, Breida, Wilson). He just keeps insisting on shelling out for RBs who aren't as good as those guys.

That's true. Let's hope this one works better.

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[Bingo_AlphaMan]

I sharing this because I share the same sentiments as Vish on this issue:

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[Bingo_AlphaMan]

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I was hoping that he’d go back to wearing his college jersey number.

[arich35]

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I was hoping that he’d go back to wearing his college jersey number.

Wasn't that 5? Lance would have to change his number and I doubt that would happen. He had a better chance of buying it from Wilson

[Chupchup]

He's kinda like Deebo. He'll play some RB and some Slot Receiver. This is great. We definitely needed more weapons on offense.

[Samurai]

Whereas a guy like Danny Gray is of very limited value when your QB can't throw deeper than 20 yards, CMC seems like a much better weapon for Jimmy. Jimmy much prefers to throw short check-downs rather than deep balls; CMC (like Deebo) is a threat to break every 3 yard check-down into a big play. Add in the YAC abilities of Aiyuk and Kittle taking short passes over the middle, another short pass that Jimmy excels at, and we become a much more explosive and high-powered offense without forcing Jimmy into doing things he isn't good at. I'm excited to see what this offense can do once CMC learns the playbook.

[Jikkle]

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[Jikkle]

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[CrimsonCrew]

Whereas a guy like Danny Gray is of very limited value when your QB can't throw deeper than 20 yards, CMC seems like a much better weapon for Jimmy. Jimmy much prefers to throw short check-downs rather than deep balls; CMC (like Deebo) is a threat to break every 3 yard check-down into a big play. Add in the YAC abilities of Aiyuk and Kittle taking short passes over the middle, another short pass that Jimmy excels at, and we become a much more explosive and high-powered offense without forcing Jimmy into doing things he isn't good at. I'm excited to see what this offense can do once CMC learns the playbook.

It's a bit of a misconception that Danny Gray is a pure deep threat. On the contrary, at least based on what I have seen, he was used as much if not more running shorter routes, crossers and screens where he used his speed after the catch, as he was on pure deep routes. It's part of what I figured appealed to shanahan.

Especially with McCaffrey opening up the field even more for our wide receivers, I would love to see us try more of that with Gray. Try anything with him, really....