SANTA CLARA, Calif. — It was June of 2012 when Justin Smith showed a bit of clairvoyance.
The 49ers had just come off Jim Harbaugh’s first season as head coach. They’d unexpectedly gone all the way to overtime of the NFC Championship Game, their first playoff run in nine mostly terrible seasons.
They were a tight-knit squad — Harbaugh liked to think of them as a band of brothers — and they crackled with confidence and electricity. They took the Bay Area by storm, and everyone believed they’d surely seize a title in the coming years. It was written in the stars.
Smith’s message that spring, however, was decidedly down to earth. It had to do about the windows of opportunity and how these can close faster than expected.
“Yeah, I figure I’ve got three more good years in me, four more good years,” the defensive lineman said. “You know, I don’t want to be the guy who comes in – the third-down guy – plays 17 years. So, I’m figuring, let’s go. Time is of the essence.”
Smith was wrong. Six months after Smith spoke, Smith, iron man once torn aside, was finally able to speak. SaintsJermon Bushrod, who looked like a strawman, ripped his left triceps tendon and tackled Jermon Bushrod. Patriots.
Smith was a right side defensive lineman who led with his left arm. He used it as a truncheon, and when the tendon to the biggest muscle in the arm snapped — “I heard it more than felt it,” he’d said later — he lost his power.
“I mean, that was kind of the beginning of my left arm falling apart,” he said. “It was my triceps and then my shoulder the following year. That was just the kiss of death for that arm.”
It was symbolic for a team that had suddenly lost its left hook. And a year and a half after he spoke in June, his team’s window of opportunity was gone. After sustaining a terrible knee injury during the 2013 NFC Championship, NaVorro bowman was never the same. Patrick Willis was banged up for most of the 2014 season, then retired — along with Smith — early in 2015.
Most of the guys from that 2012 squad — including Smith, Harbaugh and Bowman — are back in the Bay Area this weekend for a reunion. They’ll be recognized before Sunday’s game and Harbaugh is scheduled to blast the stadium’s foghorn. Undoubtedly, the fan base will go crazy. Harbaugh will be the same when he grabs that foghorn.
They’ll also provide a nice backdrop for the current 49ers, who seem to fully understand Smith’s decade-old message. Adding Christian McCaffrey is all about striking while the iron’s hot. Or maybe even while it’s merely warm to the touch.
Get Deeper
Christian McCaffrey and the 49ers beat Rams to death, and they steal their slogan
The 49ers aren’t a great team right now. They’re not nearly as good as the 2012 squad that lost in the Super Bowl or Kyle Shanahan’s 2019 team that began the season 8-0, added receiver Emmanuel Sanders at midseason and also fell in the Super Bowl.
The current 49ers are a 3-3 team, inconsistent and easily mistaken. McCaffrey’s acquisition is designed to add a jolt of 2012-like electricity to the mix so they can break away from the pack.
When Shanahan spoke to players during the Friday morning team meeting, McCaffrey hadn’t yet arrived in the building. The head coach’s message: The window of opportunity is wide open.
“The way him and John (Lynch) looked at it is that this team is ready to win now and that they want to go all-in,” fullback Kyle Juszczyk said. “He related to when we got Emmanuel Sanders in the Super Bowl year. It wasn’t necessarily that we had to have someone at that position, it was that we feel we can do some really special things, so why not add that weapon to what we already have?”
• Speaking of the 2012 squad, McCaffrey is no Frank Gore when it comes to durability. He began his career in Gore-like fashion — he played all 16 games in each of his first three seasons. In the last two, however, he’s missed 23 of 33 games with ankle, shoulder and hamstring issues.
That’s the red flag/red cross with McCaffrey. Although he’s just 26, he’s already accumulated a lot of mileage. Among active tailbacks, McCaffrey’s 3,337 offensive snaps are fewer than only Ezekiel Elliott (age 27), Melvin Melvin III (29), Mark Ingram II(32) Latavius Murray (32). These guys are not starters anymore, much less all-down backs.
Lynch said McCaffrey’s health record was “pristine” coming out of Stanford.
“The last couple of years have been rough,” he said. “But it really felt like this year he had reestablished that health. You know, I’ve been there in my own career. I started off and struggled to stay on the field, then went eight, nine years without missing a game.”
“You can never have complete certainty on that,” he continued. “It’s beyond our control. However, you make the best decision possible. He has played a lot of football this year and he’s played really good football. He’s done that throughout his career.”
• This point was stolen from the comments section of a recent story (thanks, Rob M.) and is a good one. McCaffrey’s acquisition comes immediately after a game in which starting running back Jeff Wilson Jr.Had a costly fumble, and slot receiver Ray-Ray McCloud IIIA huge drop in sales.
No, McCaffrey’s not here as a direct result of those plays. But they underscore thin spots in the 49ers’ lineup. Wilson has been a solid backup, but he’s not as explosive as McCaffrey and has a history of fumbles.
McCloud has four catches on nine targets, and McCloud is only 14 yards from the catch. Pro Football Focus shows McCaffrey with 33 catches and 299 yards following the catch. He’s lined up in the slot 23 times this season.
#49ersYAC leaders through Week 6 per PFF
* Christian McCaffrey: 299
* Deebo Samuel: 271
* Brandon Aiyuk: 148
* George Kittle: 105** Kittle’s played in two fewer games than the others
— Matt Barrows (@mattbarrows) October 21, 2022
• To better appreciate what the 49ers gave up for McCaffrey (second-, third- and fourth-round picks in April, a fifth-round pick in 2024) here’s a list of players drafted in those rounds in the Shanahan era. Ironically, the lost fifth-rounder could sting the most given the team’s success there:
2nd: Dante Pettis, Deebo Samuel, Aaron Banks, Drake Jackson
3rd: Ahkello Witherspoon, C.J. Beathard, Fred Warner, Tarvarius Moore, Jalen Hurd, Trey Sermon, Ambry Thomas, Tyrion Davis-Price, Danny Gray
4th: Joe Williams Kentavius Street, Mitch Wishnowsky, Spencer Burford
5th: George Kittle, Trent Taylor, D.J. Reed, Dre greenlaw, Colton McKivitz, Jaylon Moore, Deommodore Lenoir, Talanoa Hufanga, Samuel Womack III
The 49ers’ remaining picks in the upcoming draft:
• Round 3 (compensatory)
• Round 3 (compensatory)
• Round 5
• Round 7
• Round 7 (from Denver in last year’s Jonas Griffith trade)
Also, the team could receive compensatory picks for the fifth (D.J. Jones), sixth (Arden Key) and seventh rounds (K’Waun Williams).
• The buzz surrounding McCaffrey’s arrival nearly reached the level of Jimmy Garoppolo’s midway through the 2017 season. Sanders, however, kept popping up because he was able almost immediately to make an impact.
Sanders arrived in 2019 on Wednesday and played his first 100-yard receiving match as a 49er the week following. He was also instrumental in mentoring a young receiving crew, including rookie Samuel. Shanahan believed McCaffrey would have the same effect on rookies such as Davis-Price. Jordan Mason.
“Emmanuel was awesome,” Shanahan said. “He figured it out in a week and (eventually) helped a lot of the young guys figure it out better even though they’d been here for a while. And I think Christian will be very similar in that way.”
(Photo: Rusty Jones / Associated Press
