SANTA CLARA — Christian McCaffrey was recognized as the Offensive Player of the Year for his performance during the 2023 NFL season, but there always is room for improvement.
Offensive line coach Chris Foerster knows the All-Pro running back is one of the game's best but believes McCaffrey can take his game to an even higher level.
“He came to me and said, ‘Give me so many days and I’ll stop missing some cuts,' ” Foerster said Saturday. “He misses cuts and he sometimes isn’t as sharp. We’ve said, you have to keep practicing and football’s a hard game to keep practicing because there’s the hitting, the hitting, the hitting.
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“So you have a fine line between getting ready and not beating yourself up.”
Foerster knows he and the 49ers' training staff have to protect McCaffrey from himself by making sure he takes sufficient rest days, but the assistant coach loves the ball carrier’s desire to be on the field as much as possible.
“There’s always stuff to work on. We add something to the offense," Foerster said. "The defense presents something different. That’s what I see from Christian is that he wants to be perfect. So, he’s never satisfied and he’s always hard on himself.
“And so he will just continue to work hard at everything he does and he’ll make mistakes and he’ll beat himself up and then do the best he can to fix it.”
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McCaffrey carried the ball 272 times for a league-high 1,459 yards in 2023 and also caught 67 passes for 564 yards, giving him the highest total yards from scrimmage (2,023) for the season along with 23 all-purpose touchdowns that also topped the league.
While McCaffrey is a perfectionist, Foerster is happy it’s not to the point that it’s detrimental to his game. The running back just wants to be the best player possible and will work at a concept until it’s at the appropriate standard.
“I’ve come around to not like coaching perfectionists because it’s an imperfect game, and you go in the tank because you’re not perfect,” Foerster said. “Get in line. None of us are – coaches, players, none of us. Christian is hard on himself, but he’s really, really good, so when those hard plays come, there’s not many of them, he probably over does it, but it doesn’t put him in a downward spiral. It actually motivates him.”
It will be a challenge for McCaffrey to improve upon his record-setting 2023 performance, but if the Stanford product’s work ethic has anything to do with it, it’s a possibility.
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