Christian McCaffrey is breaking down the decision to sit out of the San Francisco 49ers’ opening game against the New York Jets.
“My mindset every week is I’m going to play,” McCaffrey, 28, told Bay Area reporters via ESPN on Wednesday, September 11. “There’s been weeks where I’ll go the full week, not even feeling good enough to do the walk-through, and then I wake up and the body’s capable of a lot of cool things.”
McCaffrey didn’t play during Monday, September 9’s game because of lingering calf and Achilles tendon issues, according to the outlet.
“Mentally, I’m always prepared to play, and then I woke up and it was a group decision, a very tough one,” the NFL star continued. “I hate not playing, but I look at it as a chess move and something that hopefully you can benefit from the rest of the season.”
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The decision to keep McCaffrey off the field for the franchise’s first game of the 2024-2025 NFL season was a group one that was not taken lightly. Coach Kyle Shanahan explained earlier this week that the star running back’s Achilles tendinitis has been an issue since the severity of the injury comes and goes.
After he was asked whether the team had thought of putting McCaffrey on the injured reserve list, Shanahan, 44, immediately shot down the idea.
“No, I’ve never considered that,” Shanahan said. “We considered that he would play last week, so definitely not thinking about four weeks off.”
As for whether he’ll be healthy enough to play during Sunday’s game against the Minnesota Vikings, McCaffrey is confident he’ll be “ready to go.”
He added, “My mentality is I’m playing this week. That’s where I’m at. That’s how I am every week. I’m not lying. I think as soon as a player says, ‘Maybe I’ll play, maybe I won’t,’ that’s not a good mentality to go into a week with when you’re kind of on the fence.”
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Though McCaffrey did not play in Monday night’s game, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s been preparing for the season over the last couple months. McCaffrey, who was drafted eighth overall by the Carolina Panthers in 2017 before being traded to the 49ers in 2022, was even thinking about football during his June wedding to Olivia Culpo – according to Coach Shanahan.
“When he’s probably walking down the aisle to get married, he’s probably thinking about his feet and how to do routes, no offense to Olivia,” Shanahan, who was in attendance at McCaffrey’s nuptials, told reporters in August. “But he’s obsessed with it. When you take every rep, every walk-through, everything you do, you’re just so deliberate and everything.”
He added of McCaffrey’s injury: “When you do get in these situations where you do get hurt and can’t go do all that stuff, at least he’s put the work in before. So that stuff does come back fast. He understands what it takes to play in this game, especially at the level he does.”
