Christian McCaffrey arrived in the Bay Area on Friday and played 21 snaps with his new team Sunday. That’s impressive.
It also didn’t help the San Francisco 49ers get a win.
McCaffrey looked fine in his 49ers debut. He had 38 rushing yards on eight carries and two catches for 24 receiving yards. Given that he had less than 72 hours from the time the Carolina Panthers traded him to learn a playbook and his teammates, it was a reasonable debut.
“This was a weird week, for me and for them,” McCaffrey said after the game. “I didn’t kind of know what to expect. I had a list of plays. For me, mentally, it was just focus on everything I can control.”
The 49ers don’t have any more time to ease McCaffrey in slowly. They’re 3-4 after a 44-23 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. They can’t have McCaffrey playing about 20 percent of the offensive snaps in any more games, especially after the draft haul they sent to Carolina for him.
The 49ers acted like contenders when they sent four draft picks to Carolina for McCaffrey. Teams that expect to perhaps squeeze in the playoffs and hope to win a game there don’t trade four picks for a running back. The 49ers believe they’re close and McCaffrey can close that gap.
The good news is McCaffrey played pretty well in his debut with almost no time to prepare. He wasn’t going to step off a plane and handle 25 touches. He did well with what he was asked to do.
“I thought he did a good job,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said after the game. “It was just impressive that he understood everything we were asking him to do. I don’t think he made any mistakes in the game and was able to make some pretty good plays too.”
The 49ers have a week before a big NFC West showdown against the Los Angeles Rams in Week 8. Then the 49ers have a bye, and McCaffrey should be as caught up as he’s going to get by Week 10.
San Francisco doesn’t want to dig a deeper hole. A 3-5 record going into the bye would not be good for a team that thinks, based on the trade, that it can contend. Expect to see a lot more of McCaffrey next week, and hopefully he’ll be ready for it.
“He’ll learn the whole gameplan next week” Shanahan said when asked how quickly McCaffrey can get up to speed.