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Much of Christian McCaffrey’s NFL success can be traced to his maniacal work habits.
Now, he likely is facing the downside of the countless hours of offseason training.
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“Tendinitis is an over-training injury, meaning you’re training too hard or doing too much, and it turns into tendinitis,” Ed McCaffrey, Christian’s dad, said on the "Ross Tucker Football Podcast."
“If I would say that Christian has a weakness, it’s that he sometimes has to protect himself from himself, in terms of training too much and doing too much.”
The 49ers placed McCaffrey, the 2023 NFL Offensive Player of the Year, on injured reserve on the eve of the team’s second game of the season. McCaffrey has bilateral Achilles tendinitis, meaning he has the condition in both legs.
“If you have tendinitis, you have tendinitis,” Ed McCaffrey said. “I think of it as tennis elbow. You see tennis players get it, and they can’t play tennis for a while until it heals up.
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“He has that in his Achilles. It started with one, then it creeps into your calf and you start overcompensating and then you start feeling it in the other one. It’s just tendinitis. It just means it’s very, very sore.”
Christian McCaffrey is eligible to be activated from IR after the 49ers’ Week 5 game against the Arizona Cardinals. But there is no timetable for his return to action.
Ed McCaffrey said his son went straight back to training after getting married in the offseason. He never took a honeymoon in order to train hard for the 2024 season.
“I feel comfortable saying this: There is no player on the planet in any sport that pays as much money to have people help take care of his body than Christian does,” Ed McCaffrey said.
“He’ll have a good plan. He’ll be back when he’s back. And hopefully playing at 100 percent and going out there and helping his team win.”
Christian McCaffrey was sidelined with the condition early in training camp and returned to the practice field a month later. The condition only worsened when he resumed practicing.
Recently, he traveled to Germany to receive treatment for his condition.
“He trusts his 49ers training staff,” Ed McCaffrey said, “but when the prescription is just to rest, he’s going to go out and get other professional opinions from people around the world.”
McCaffrey got back to training hard after the 49ers’ disappointing Super Bowl loss to Kansas City. His offseason workouts were similar to the previous year which set him up for his outstanding 2023 season.
“It worked last year, but this year maybe he overdid it a little bit in the offseason and came in and got injured,” Ed McCaffrey said. “But you never really know. Maybe it would’ve happened anyway, but that’s part of his process.
“He’ll go back and reevaluate everything. Knowing how he is, he’ll reevaluate every day of the offseason from (this) year and try to figure out, ‘How do I change it so I show up ready to go (next) year.’”