One of the biggest takeaways from the San Francisco 49ers 27-7 win over the Los Angeles Rams last weekend was the split at running back. Rookie Kaelon Black ended up with four more carries than Christian McCaffrey, as he went for 65 yards on 14 carries, while McCaffrey had 10 rushes for 68 yards.
Black, who was a surprise pick in the third round of the 2026 NFL Draft, has impressed the coaching staff quite a bit this offseason, but it was still unclear how much of a split we’d see at running back,
given how much McCaffrey has dominated the position’s snaps in recent years.
Well, San Francisco went to Black early and often, keeping McCaffrey fresh while riding the hot hand as the run game flourished against Los Angeles. Was that the expectation, and will that continue to be the case?
“I think, yes, we wanted to [rotate running backs], but you have to have the faith and the comfort, and it has to be earned,” general manager John Lynch said on KNBR on Thursday morning. “So, Kaelon, I think, through the way he performed in training camp, him being on his assignments, his ability to pass [protect earned him the right].”
The big debate in recent years has been the value in taking McCaffrey off the field. While he’s racked up an exorbitant amount of touches, his value as a three-down back has made it hard for the 49ers to use a rotation.
The 49ers still plan to have McCaffrey take on a workhorse load of touches in certain games. It just might not be as often with more viable backup options.
“When you have options to split the carries, it’s hard to take Christian off the field,” Lynch added. “Christian doesn’t like coming off the field, but I think there’s a vision for how we want to do this, and you want to keep people healthy in a game, you want to keep people fresh for a season.
“And so, I promise you, there’s going to be games where Christian’s right back to having the amount of touches he had last year. But it’s just the flow of the game, the way it went. Kaelon had a hot hand there. Christian ran it when he had his opportunities extremely well. The name of the game is to win, and running the football was a big part of that win, and we did it very well.”
Head coach Kyle Shanahan chimed in as well, noting that Black’s body of work in the offseason has given the team the confidence to sub him in often.
“More that he earned in training camp to be our number two back, so he was who we were going to go with and just how prepared he seemed throughout the week,” Shanahan said of Black. “I mean, there wasn’t a time that, all right, Christian got this rep, it’s a play for Christian, and his backup won’t know what to do. He showed during the week how attentive he was, how much he knew, how much he was studying whether he got to rep or not.
“And when you do that, even though certain things you definitely want to keep Christian in on, that just makes it a lot easier for Bobby (Turner) to sub him. He doesn’t always know what play I’m going to call and stuff, and when you’re confident that the backup knows what he’s doing and can do it, it makes it easier on the position coaches.”
The 49ers will likely rely on their run game a ton again in Week 2 when they face the Miami Dolphins at home. San Francisco enters the weekend as a near two-touchdown favorite, which means we could see a lot of Black once again.
