Christian McCaffrey is set to face his former team when the 49ers host the Carolina Panthers on Monday night, but there is another universe where San Francisco is the only professional franchise the All-Pro running back has ever known.
In 2017 the 49ers held the No.2 overall pickin theNFl draft, and there certainly were discussions about taking McCaffrey with that selection on the heels of his standout career just down the road at Stanford University.
Ultimately San Francisco opted to take McCaffrey’s teammate, selecting defensive tackle Solomon Thomas No. 3 overall after trading back with the Chicago Bears. That paved the way for the Carolina to select McCaffrey No. 8 overall.
Shanahan clearly had a vision for McCaffrey’s role within the 49ers’ offense after acquiring the star back in 2022, so what exactly prompted San Francisco’s decision to pass on the All-Pro ball carrier the first time around?
It all stemmed from a vision rooted in rebuilding a depleted San Francisco roster from the ground up starting with the defensive line, a process Shanahan detailed to NBC Sports Bay Area’s Matt Maiocco during this week’s edition of “49ers Game Plan.”
“There was discussion, just because he was one of the better offensive players in the draft,” Shanahan told Maiocco. “But it was just so much when John [Lynch] and I came here, that we knew where we were at as a team. We knew we really had to build this and we just so badly wanted to build it through a defensive line and to build it defensively. It was just so hard at the time to imagine taking a running back with the second overall pick when you had a team that you felt wasn’t ready and you needed to add people.”
McCaffrey has amassed over 5,000 yards from scrimmage in 42 regular season games since joining the 49ers, which naturally prompts the question if Shanahan ever dwells on passing on the back in 2017.
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“Now when I look back at it, that definitely would have been the right pick,” Shanahan said. “Him or probably [Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick] Mahomes. In hindsight, obviously. When we were there, our intentions were to build this through the D-line. Build it that way and we could get some running backs later and stuff. But Christian would have been a hell of a pick at No. 2.”
Waiting until a later round to take a running back is precisely what San Francisco ended up doing, selectingout of Utah with the No. 121 overall selection in the 2017 Draft. Williams never played a regular season snap for the 49ers after suffering an ankle injury before the start of the 2017 NFL season. San Francisco ended up waiving Williams in August 2018, marking one of the more objective draft misses of the Shanahan-Lynch era.
That whiff stings a bit more knowing McCaffrey was there for the taking, but the silver lining is football fans still to see his dynamic abilities on display in Shanahan’s offense, including a sensational 2023 campaign that earned him NFL Offensive Player of the Year honors.
