Young believes CMC addition allows 49ers to ‘abuse' defenses

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The 49ers' offense has the potential to be scary once running back Christian McCaffrey gets caught up to speed.

Should San Francisco have all their weapons healthy, it makes the opposing defenses' task of zeroing in on one aspect of the 49ers' offense challenging. 

During a Wednesday appearance on KNBR 680's "Tolbert & Copes," 49ers legend Steve Young discussed the "bind" coach Kyle Shanahan could put the opposition in with players he has in his offensive arsenal.

"If Kyle can design things that put Deebo [Samuel] and him and Brandon [Aiyuk] in places and George [Kittle] in places where they can start to help each other and understand the space relationship amongst each other, what we're trying to accomplish with three of them, you can say, wow, that's a problem," Young said. 

"But four of them, you can put people in a bind every play if everybody is on the same page. That's why I think, why they paid the price [to trade for McCaffrey] that they did is because you can start to abuse people with the people you're throwing at them."

McCaffrey saw limited time in the 49ers' 44-23 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs last Sunday at Levi's Stadium, considering the former Carolina Panthers running back arrived in the Bay Area just two days prior. 

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Nonetheless, an entire week of practice for McCaffrey could see Shanahan begin to open up the playbook, which would be an ideal situation as the 49ers are 3-4 and are facing their NFC West rival, the Los Angeles Rams, on Sunday at SoFi Stadium. 

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