San Francisco 49ers' Christian McCaffrey (23) stiff arms New York Giants' Adoree' Jackson (22) in the third quarter at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
Christian McCaffrey has been the most important player in the NFL’s best offense, playing for the NFL’s best team this season.
He’s scoring more than a touchdown a game, and he leads the NFL in yards from scrimmage and all-purpose yards. He has nearly 25 percent more yards than the next-best player in his primary yardage category.
Who cares if McCaffrey’s a running back? He’s been dominant, and that’s why the Niners’ superstar should be considered the league’s MVP frontrunner a quarter of the way through the campaign.
Now, is it a bit early to be talking MVP? Absolutely.
But it’s necessary when we’re talking about McCaffrey. He has an uphill climb against history — and, apparently, plenty of naysayers — ahead of him.
For the last decade, every NFL MVP has been a quarterback.
Only three running backs have won the award since 2000.
And MVP is a narrative-driven award.
The positive narrative needs to start early for a running back to win it. For a West Coast running back to win it, we need to get way ahead of things. (See: McCaffrey being robbed of the 2015 Heisman at Stanford.)
Sadly, I might already be a bit late with this column.
Despite the show Niners fans — and NFL fans worldwide — have been treated to the last four games, a contingent of contrarians has sprung up against this CMC-for-MVP campaign.
These folks aren’t watching the games, as far as I can tell. Their understanding of football is strictly stats-based. But they have influence.
And while I enjoy a good stat as much as anyone, the stat-based argument these nerds are making against McCaffrey is disingenuous and embarrassing.
Neil Greenberg does good, interesting work at the Washington Post, but his recent column “Christian McCaffrey is putting up huge numbers, but he isn’t the NFL MVP” is predicated on a flawed concept.
It also features the line: “[L]ogistic regression on historical expected points added data can tell us how likely a player is to win the MVP award in a given season.”
Man, that gets the blood pumping through my veins.
Jokes aside, Greenberg claims that because McCaffrey doesn’t produce an elite EPA (expected points added) number, he cannot be MVP.
I like EPA as a stat. I have used it in this very space.
It’s valuable when comparing quarterbacks to quarterbacks, receivers to receivers, running backs to running backs.
But when you use EPA to compare players across positions, you lose me.
It presumes a universality and infallibility to the metric, and that’s not the case. EPA is a biased stat that favors passing and undervalues running the ball.
That makes EPA a terrible guide to helping people understand football.
We might be in a pass-happy era, but to infer that running the football has lesser value in today’s game is preposterous.
EPA might say that a 40-yard pass is better than a five-yard touchdown run, but that presumes that every yard is equal and every snap takes place inside a vacuum.
We know that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Just ask any NFL defender or defensive coordinator.
Football is a game that exacts an intense physical and mental toll.
This game still requires an immense amount of feel and, yes, a bit of a loose screw.
Yes, quarterbacks are incredibly valuable. (Perhaps there’s a conversation down the line to be had about Brock Purdy.)
But a running back that can be a one-man offense is incredibly valuable, too. I’m talking about the best of the best — the guys who grab yards and scores from places they shouldn’t be found, breaking the spirit of a defense in the process.
Those are the players that offensive coordinators and playcallers value above all else.
And that’s exactly what McCaffrey has done so far this season.
Sorry, the spreadsheets can’t capture what we see week in and week out.
Now, the tough part: McCaffrey has to keep doing what he’s been doing. The Niners’ running back already has 98 touches (rushes and catches) this season. That puts him on pace for 416 — the most touches by a player since 2014.
But if the running back keeps putting up the yards and scoring touchdowns — and the Niners keep winning — this MVP campaign should only gain momentum.
Originally published at Dieter Kurtenbach