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Is Christian McCaffrey a sell-high after his biggest workload season ever?
Apr 16, 2026r/DynastyFFr/DynastyFF
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Stumbled upon a few 49ers podcasts today (“49ers Cutback” and “49ers Talk”) that brought up how the coaching staff intends to reduce CMC’s snap count and overall usage in 2026 to keep him fresher for the postseason. Was skeptical because we’ve all heard that story before, but it sent me down a rabbit hole. A few things stood out: (1) Coach Speak Index grades Kyle Shanahan as one of the most trustworthy coaches when it comes to usage/workload. Don’t know how accurate this site is, but interesting. (2) CMC had 413 touches this past regular season. CMC has only had 400+ touches one other time in his career (403 touches in 2019). The following year, he only played 3 games. ^ Side note: Those 3 games from 2020 were insane. He started off with 28.5 and 24.8 ppr points, missed 6 games, came back for 1 week and put up 37.1 points, then missed the rest of the season. (3) This SI.com article explains how Shanahan and CMC both acknowledged the need for more RB depth to reduce his workload. Neither of them has ever been this adamant about that before in the past. CMC also said this past season was the toughest of his career. (4) CMC’s average long run per game dropped to 13 yards last season compared to 20 yards in previous years (Fantasy Footballers). Could be a symptom of o-line/offense, toll of a large workload, and/or declining explosiveness. So with all that, it feels like there are two paths you can go down with this info: (A) Sell him off a monster year, knowing it will be tough to repeat, and there are already some warning flags. (B) Ride him until the wheels fall off, because even if the reduced workload stuff is true, a 70%-90% CMC is still really, really, good (and fun to have on your team). Which side are you taking? If you want to track every podcast/article mention of CMC as new info drops this offseason, this player page does it automatically. submitted by /u/mochajoesdynsaty [link] [comments]