The roadmap seems clearer for the return of San Francisco 49ers All-Pro running back Christian McCaffrey, who is entering the home stretch of his rehabilitation from the Achilles tendinitis that plagued him throughout training camp.
On Monday, 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said the reigning Offensive Player of the Year would “hit it hard” and simulate a practice while the 49ers are on their bye this week. If he emerges from those sessions without any pain in his Achilles — he dealt with the issue in both legs this summer — the plan is to open his practice window one week from today and then activate him before the Week 10 game in Tampa Bay.
“It depends on how this week goes,” Shanahan said on a conference call. “He’s had no setbacks, so it looks like we’re on track.”
The 49ers were planning for McCaffrey to play in the season opener against the New York Jets. The tendonitis issue, however, flared before that game, and he was held out. When it failed to go away in the run-up to Week 2, the 49ers placed him on injured reserve in order to give him the rest he hadn’t received to that point.
Jordan Mason filled in well as his backup over the first eight games and currently ranks third in the NFL in rushing yards. Mason, however, sustained a shoulder sprain in Week 6 and aggravated it early on in Sunday’s win over the Dallas Cowboys. Rookie Isaac Guerendo filled in after that and finished with 85 rushing yards, 17 rushing yards and his first NFL touchdown, a four-yard score in the third quarter.
While the 49ers running game remained robust without McCaffrey, they haven’t been nearly as good in the red zone without him and they haven’t thrown nearly as much to their running backs. Mason has just 12 pass targets in the first eight weeks of the season.
During his stint on IR, McCaffrey traveled to Germany, presumably to look into therapies that aren’t available in the United States, though he hasn’t explicitly revealed why he went abroad.
One possibility was to look into having stem cells cultured, a treatment unavailable in the United States due to FDA restrictions. Doctors there can extract stem cells, perhaps from bone marrow, and weeks later there are three to five times as many cells to inject into the Achilles tendon. The process is meant to stimulate healing in that tendon, which gets low blood flow and does not repair quickly on its own.
When McCaffrey returned from Germany, the 49ers slowly ramped up his activity level, a process that should hit its crescendo this week.
Asked if McCaffrey will have his usual workload once he’s cleared to play, Shanahan hinted he’ll be eased back into the mix.
“The expectation is we’ll see how he is when he gets back and then evaluate him as he goes,” he said. “Of course, the hope is that everything just goes back to normal (and is) perfect. That’s what we’re all striving for. But we’ve got to play that out smartly and evaluate that each day — what we see with our own eyes, what he tells us. That will be something we’re constantly working through.”
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(Photo: Brooke Sutton / Getty Images)
