It’s hard to find an NFL franchise that has had worse injury luck in recent seasons than the San Francisco 49ers. The Niners made Super Bowl LIV in 2020, where they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs. Unfortunately for San Francisco, since then, the Chiefs have been devastated by injuries, preventing them from becoming serious contenders in a loaded NFC West division.
Things have been so tough for the Niners injury-wise that award-winning investigative sports journalist Pablo Torre dug into rumors that an electric substation near San Francisco’s practice facility was responsible for all the injuries.
Torre debunked the rumors, but that won’t give Niners fans much solace. Promising young wide receiver Ricky Pearsall is already out for the season after undergoing knee surgery for a PCL injury. Now, the 49ers are once again managing an injury to one of the best players on their roster and a perennial offensive player of the year candidate.
McCaffrey, who has an unfortunately robust history of season-altering injuries, missed practice on Sunday due to the same “tightness” that has kept him out of practice since last Monday, per Pro Football Talk.
For his part, San Francisco head coach Kyle Shanahan is downplaying the severity of McCaffrey missing practice time.
“No,” Shanahan said, according to David Bonilla of 49erswebzone.com. “My concern would be him toughing through tightness, like a lot of people do, and then hurting something bad, and then pulling something, which then, it could be a month. That would be our concern, so once we hear him talking a certain way, Christian’s a guy who needs to get prepared for Week 1.
“But also, we’re pretty confident in what he’s done before. We’re confident in what he’s done these two weeks, and we just want to make sure we don’t make it something to be concerned about.”
McCaffrey, who is 30, led the league in touches last year with 413 across 17 regular-season games. The Niners will have to find a way to manage his workload bettter, or his career will be unnecessarily shortened, electrical substation or not.
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