Christian McCaffrey made mincemeat of the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday. A bird stew, if you will.
It was a record-setting day for a player who continues to stake his claim as the league’s best running back, en route to a 35-16 victory that made the 49ers one of two teams in the NFL, along with the Eagles, that remain undefeated. They’ve now scored at least 30 in every game, with an average margin of victory of 16.75 points.
McCaffrey goes thermonuclear
It’s hard to understate the absurdity of what McCaffrey does on the football field. Since he’s joined the 49ers, his future Hall of Fame-caliber play has ratcheted up.
Starting with that three-touchdown game against the Los Angeles Rams, he’s sent this offense into another stratosphere.
He put the Cardinals’ defense in the blender in a do-it-all way that exemplifies what makes him so special.
With his first touchdown of the day, McCaffrey had a 13th-straight game with a touchdown, breaking Jerry Rice’s franchise record for consecutive games with a touchdown. Then he had three more.
His 177 all-purpose yards were split near evenly on the ground (101 yards, 3 TDs on 17 attempts) and through the air (7 receptions, 71 yards, 1 TD).
The running back position has been devalued because most running backs aren’t nearly the pass-catchers McCaffrey is, and there’s quite of a bit of rushing replaceability at a position more prone to injury than any other.
But McCaffrey is a reminder that he’s not another running back. He is one of the most valuable players in the league because he can (and does) do everything.
His second touchdown of the day was the defining one. He hurdled his way to the end zone with the grace of a gazelle. That might sound a little hyperbolic, but it was jaw-dropping and effortless.
He did this all game long. The question now is not whether he’ll continue to pull off absurd plays week after week, but how the 49ers will keep him healthy. He’s shouldering a huge load on this offense, and especially with Elijah Mitchell missing this week, there might have to be more of an effort to protect McCaffrey throughout the game.
That said, he’s going for chunk yardage every time he touches the ball. It’s hard to take it out of his hands.
Arizona’s aggression turns a would-be blowout into a grinder
Jonathan Gannon has to be given immense credit for how competitive Sunday was. The 49ers looked like they were going to trot along and dominate Arizona, probably wrapping the game up by the third quarter.
The Cardinals were having none of it. They went for it on 4th-and-7 near midfield, and converted, thanks to a Josh Dobbs scramble and stretch of the football. That turned into a long, slow field goal drive.
On their next drive, on a 4th-and-2 at their own 21-yard line, they faked a punt, snapping the ball directly to linebacker Ezekiel Turner for a first-down conversion.
Josh Dobbs and co. proceeded to matriculate the ball down the field on a 13-play, 92-yard touchdown drive that all but ended the half.
That level of aggression and commitment to physical football, as typified by James Conner’s bruising running style, kept Arizona afloat.
When they got the ball after the 49ers’ first unsuccessful offensive drive of the game, it was at their one-yard line.
Gannon, channeling the style of his old haunt in Philadelphia, used the “tush push” QB sneak to get off the goal line, and two more times on that drive in key situations.
It was patient, physical football until a 41-yard completion to Marquise Brown broke that pace and got the Cardinals down to the 49ers’ 22-yard line. A few plays later, Dobbs found Michael Wilson in the end zone for the second time.
A patient effort from both Oren Burks and Talanoa Hufanga stopped a two-point conversion that would have made it a field goal game. Instead, it was held at five points, and the 49ers immediately responded with another McCaffrey touchdown drive that made things comfortable again.
Arizona is not a talented football team, and they’re probably not a “good” football team. But for a team that’s now 1-3, they made things tough, and certainly tougher than the other opponents the 49ers have faced this season.
Brock Purdy and Brandon Aiyuk
Where would you rank Brandon Aiyuk in the hierarchy of NFL receivers? He’s making a pretty compelling case every week that wherever he’s being ranked, it’s not high enough.
Part of the comes from the fact that the 49ers have McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel and George Kittle. Things clearly did not run nearly as smoothly last Thursday without Aiyuk out there, at least in the first half.
But he has become Brock Purdy’s go-to weapon because when he’s one-on-one, he wins. And when he wins, he has demonstrated an outrageous ability to locate the ball at difficult angles at the last second.
He made one catch that was almost Willie Mays-esque, where he crossed over the middle, looked up in that difficult spot where the sun emerges from the shadows and snagged the ball like a basket catch for a 42-yard gain.
It seemed whenever the ball did not go to McCaffrey, it went to Aiyuk. He finished with six catches for 148 yards on receptions of 16, 11, 42, 25, 34, and 20.
His last catch of the day was a last-second-spotted back shoulder first down that set up a Brock Purdy QB sneak touchdown.
By the way, that guy, the one throwing the ball to Aiyuk? He won’t be singled out too often because of McCaffrey, but he was nearly perfect.
Seriously.
Purdy went 20-of-21 for… no really, he was 20-of-21 and his one incompletion was a throwaway under pressure. Even the ability to throw the ball away is something, his predecessor, Jimmy Garoppolo, was fundamentally incapable of.
He missed one throw, which was intentional, and went for 283 yards, a passing touchdown and a rushing touchdown.
On the season, Purdy now has 1,019 passing yards, 5 passing TDs and 2 rushing TDs. His one turnover came in the season opener, when he was strip-sacked by a man possessed in T.J. Watt.