It’s time for Panthers RB Christian McCaffrey to prove himself again, and he knows it
Do you remember the last time Christian McCaffrey carried the ball for the Carolina Panthers in a real game?
I had to look it up. By the time he gets his first touch against the New York Jets on Sunday, it will have been 308 days.
McCaffrey had 151 total yards and scored two touchdowns against the Kansas City Chiefs on Nov. 8, 2020, but sustained a shoulder injury late in that game and had to be shelved for the rest of the season. That worried everyone, and the worry still reverberates. The Panthers have been so careful with him in the 2021 preseason that he never played a single snap, nor was he ever tackled full-force in practice.
But McCaffrey is back Sunday for Carolina’s season opener, and his return couldn’t be more significant.
If No. 22 stays healthy for all 17 games, the Panthers will have at least an outside chance of making the playoffs in 2021. If McCaffrey misses games — and he missed 13 out of 16 in 2020 — there will be no chance. Nobody scares defenses on this team like McCaffrey, who is the Panthers’ best player and their biggest star.
Is he nervous about Sunday? Undoubtedly, although he won’t say so. McCaffrey hasn’t said much of anything this past week, and his nine-minute press conference Wednesday was notable for how rarely he smiled and how little he said. He sounded like a man giving a deposition under duress — terse, businesslike and under advice to say as few words as possible. An example:
Reporter: Did what happened last year create any kind of sense of — not fear, but trepidation, based off of your body kind of not responding the way you wanted to?
McCaffrey: No.
McCaffrey prides himself on durability, so last year must have hurt his pride. He played 48 out of a possible 48 games for the Panthers from 2017-19, and he played them so well that he became arguably the NFL’s best running back and a favorite of fantasy football owners across America.
Then came last year, in which the former Stanford running back with the NFL pedigree played only three games. McCaffrey scored six touchdowns in those three games, which was ridiculously good. It was no coincidence that the only two times the Panthers managed to score 30 points all last season came in two of McCaffrey’s three 2020 appearances.
But a high-ankle sprain early in the year was followed a few weeks later by that serious shoulder injury in Kansas City, and that was that. After signing a four-year, $64-million extension that made him the NFL’s highest-paid running back, McCaffrey has barely played. Run CMC became Sit CMC.
When McCaffrey signed that lucrative contract extension, then-new head coach Matt Rhule said: “I’m anxious to continue to build this thing around him.”
McCaffrey’s absence was perhaps the single biggest reason Rhule’s first season was a 5-11 disappointment; without him, the Panthers struggled mightily in one fourth quarter after another.
Rhule has since treated McCaffrey like people treat a brand-new smartphone with no case — setting his star down gently on the bench so as not to break the glass.
“Cautious is probably the right term,” Rhule said recently, explaining why McCaffrey never played in the preseason. “It’s not even about not getting hurt. It’s just the accumulation. He’s going to take so many hits. (We’re) just saving those hits up for the season, you know. ... But I think Christian is full speed and ready to go, mentally, physically and in every way.”
McCaffrey has taken care of his body religiously, and last year was the first year it ever betrayed him.
Reporter: Is that (first hit) something you feel like you need to kind of settle in because you haven’t been hit in a while?
McCaffrey: Hopefully you don’t get hit. That’s the goal. But obviously the first hit of the game kind of gets you going a little bit.
This feels like McCaffrey’s rookie year of 2017 all over again and the Panthers will feature him quickly — I bet he touches the ball at least 25 times Sunday. McCaffrey has something to prove, and he’s going to be wound tight until he proves it. McCaffrey rarely smiled that first year, either, as he made sure everyone understood he could run between the tackles effectively and not just beat defenders in wide-open spaces.
Cam Newton was the Carolina teammate back then who helped McCaffrey remember that they are all playing a kid’s game for money, and that it was OK to be joyful when something good happened. As McCaffrey wrote on Instagram when the Panthers released Newton 18 months ago: “Thank you 1! You changed the way I approached the game and put the fun back in it for me. I’ll always owe you for that.”
Newton’s not here anymore, so others will need to remind McCaffrey that football still should be fun and not just a job he happens to do well.
Quarterback Sam Darnold should be candidate No. 1 for that. His laid-back California persona will blend nicely with McCaffrey’s once they figure out how good they can be for each other.
McCaffrey is primed for another big year. He’s still only 25. In practice, he looks like a finely tuned machine once again.
But until McCaffrey takes a few games’ worth of hits and gets up every time, we just won’t know for sure.
This story was originally published September 10, 2021 at 12:03 PM.
