Christian McCaffrey recorded the two best seasons by a running back in the last five years. Third Player Who is the first player in NFL history to have 1,000 combined receiving and rushing yards in a season? Carolina Panthers 2019. And last season, San Francisco 49ersHe ran for a league-best and career-best 1,459 yards and became just the 23rd player to total 21 or more touchdowns.
McCaffrey’s two stellar seasons combined to earn him one Offensive Player of the Year award and a third-place finish in MVP voting, both for the 2023 season. So what more does McCaffrey need to do to impress voters enough to become the first running back to win MVP in more than a decade?
McCaffrey already faces a tough road ahead, as 21 of the past 25 MVP awards since the turn of the 21st century have been won by quarterbacks, but one small ray of hope is that the four other players to have won the award have been running backs.
- 2012 Adrian Peterson
- 2006 LaDainian Tomlinson
- 2005 Shawn Alexander
- 2000 Marshall Falk
Let’s use those four as a benchmark for what McCaffrey needs to do to win the MVP. Let’s start with Peterson. Not only did Peterson become the seventh player in NFL history to rush for 2,000 yards, he did so after tearing his ACL and ACL last December. Only one other player has reached the 2,000-yard mark since Peterson did it in 2012, when Derrick Henry became the eighth player to do so.
While 2,000 yards is a rare feat, it doesn’t guarantee an MVP for a running back — it’s a coin toss, and only four of them will win the MVP.
- 2020 Henry
- 2012 Peterson – MVP
- 2006 Chris Johnson
- 2003 Jamal Lewis
- 1998 Terrell Davis – MVP
- 1997 Barry Sanders – MVP
- 1984 Eric Dickerson
- 1973 O.J. Simpson – MVP
But before we can get to the coin flip of whether the CMC2K season means MVP, the logistics of getting McCaffrey to 2,000 yards need to be worked out.
In 2023, McCaffrey finished the season with 272 rushing attempts, his most since his 1000/1000 season in 2019, and averaged a career-high 5.4 yards per attempt. If McCaffrey wants to break the 2000-yard mark at that average, he’ll need roughly 370 attempts, a 36% increase in workload from last season, something only two running backs have managed since 2010 (Henry in 2020 and DeMarco Murray in 2014).
That means making McCaffrey the sole centerpiece of an offense that includes all the names we know when he’s already the centerpiece of the offense, or raising his efficiency to 7.4 yards per carry on 270 carries, which would break Jim Brown’s record of 6.4 yards per carry on at least 270 carries.
While 2,000 yards seems like a long shot for McCaffrey, who threw a league-high 21 touchdowns last season, scoring the ball is probably McCaffrey’s best chance at winning his first career MVP award. The other three running backs to win MVP this century also scored in that way.
When LaDainian Tomlinson won the MVP in 2006, he broke the records for most rushing touchdowns (28) and total touchdowns (31) in a season, both of which still stand today. Tomlinson broke both records just one year after Shawn Alexander won the MVP in 2005, when Alexander set both records with 28 total touchdowns and 27 rushing touchdowns. Alexander broke Priest Holmes’ record of 27 total touchdowns set in 2003. (Note: Holmes was stripped of the MVP in 2003. He finished fifth in MVP voting despite having 27 total touchdowns and over 2,100 total yards.) Whose total touchdown record did Holmes break? It was 2000 MVP Marshall Faulk, who set the record with 26 total touchdowns as part of “The Greatest Show on Turf.”
The pattern is there: McCaffrey just needs to throw 11 more touchdowns from 2023 to 2024 to have the best chance of breaking a record that has stood for nearly two decades and winning the MVP.
But even that’s no guarantee, because it didn’t work for Holmes in 2003. So just to be safe, McCaffrey should rush for 2,000 yards, break Tomlinson’s 100% touchdown record and become the first running back to win MVP since Peterson in 2012. McCaffrey has the map; all he has to do is follow it.
Upon reflection, it may be easier for him to become an elite quarterback.
