Shanahan details 49ers’ efforts to secure McCaffrey record-breaking TD originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
A noteworthy storyline from the 49ers’ 34-3 thumping of the Jacksonville Jaguars was Kyle Shanahan’s concerted effort to get Christian McCaffrey a record-breaking touchdown when the game already was well out of hand late in the second half.
During a sitdown with Greg Papa for NBC Sports Bay Area’s “49ers Game Plan,” Shanahan explained how invested the entire team was to get McCaffrey an opportunity to etch his name in the NFL record books while jokingly blaming tight end George Kittle for taking a scoring opportunity away with his 66-yard touchdown reception.
“It’s unbelievable. Such a big deal doing that,” Shanahan said. “No one has really been a part of that [since] some people were with Lenny Moore. It was really amazing last year, and then it continued with this year. It’s not something you ever think about, until these last couple weeks it kind of hit me. He scored earlier in games, so you forget about it pretty quick. If we’re going to get down there with that record and stuff, we were going to give him a shot. But I blame [George] Kittle for scoring from too far out. Should have taken a knee at the one.”
Kittle wasn’t the only one of McCaffrey’s teammates to receive some blame from Shanahan, as the 49ers coach also lightheartedly named fullback Kyle Juszczyk as the main culprit preventing the record from being broken.
“I without a doubt, blame Kyle [Juszczyk] because he told me before that drive as he was running out, ‘Hey, remember we’ve got to get Christian in,’ Shanahan explained. “And as I was looking at my call sheet, I’m like, ‘I’m on it, dude. I’m working to do it’ I actually called that play [Juszczyk’s touchdown] thinking we could get it inside the 10 or five, and then it was going to be time to try for Christian. Then Kyle is the one who runs in the end zone. He runs to the sideline and tells me, ‘I thought I was already in there … I didn’t know I caught it on the three and had to go in.’ I’m not sure about that, I think he knew where he was. It was cool. We wanted to get it for him badly.”
With the 49ers leading by 31 points with just over six minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, McCaffrey registered either a rushing attempt or a target on five consecutive plays before San Francisco turned the ball over on downs at the Jaguars’ 5-yard line.
Shanahan detailed his thought process behind putting McCaffrey back on the field with the game well out of hand, citing that the risk of injury to his star running back was far less concerning than the indefinite regret that would come from not granting one of his players the chance to cement themselves in NFL history.
“It’s kind of nerve-wracking. I sat there, want to get our players out, want to keep them healthy,” Shanahan said. “If we were going for yards in one game, going for score, going for something like that, we wouldn’t have even thought about that. But for a record that takes over two years to even have an attempt to do. To be the first guy to ever do it? We were going to give him every shot.
“I actually sat there and tried to do the math. I was like, alright, he’s probably touched the ball over 200 times this year; the only time he’s gotten hurt is when he wasn’t touching the ball. So what are the percentages if I give him five more touches of him getting hurt? Those percentages are a lot lower than the percentages of how he’s going to feel about me and this whole team if I don’t give him a chance. So I rolled the dice with that. Unfortunately, we didn’t get in, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying.”
While McCaffrey will have to settle for owning a share of the NFL record for most consecutive games with a touchdown, his performance over this stretch remains remarkable.
McCaffrey recorded 23 touchdowns over that 17-game span, with the 49ers posting an impressive 13-4 record during that time.
With San Francisco slated to face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday, McCaffrey now can focus on starting another streak of dominance.
