Do we just give up on Christian McCaffrey at this point? With him having missed 13 and 10 games the last two seasons, do we just assume that he simply can’t stay healthy?
McCaffrey was the league’s most productive player in the 2018-19 seasons, with 4,357 total yards and 32 touchdowns. If he can get back to being anything close to that, you’d take him No. 1 overall. It’s just a question of whether he can stay healthy.
The injuries themselves haven’t been of the major variety. There’s no ruptured Achilles or torn ACL. We’re talking about a couple of ankle sprains, a pulled hamstring and a shoulder injury. And McCaffrey is only 26. With that in mind, I would be wary of operating under the assumption that he’s more of an injury risk than guys like Dalvin Cook and Alvin Kamara. It’s a physical position, as evidenced by even Derrick Henry missing half of last year.
I played around with some of the historical numbers on this, looking for examples of other running backs who’ve had injury issues and then rebounded to put up good numbers. I found 15 players in the last 40 years that have missed at least 5 games in back-to-back seasons, then come back and posted top-20 numbers (PPR) among running backs.
Seven of these players put up top-10 numbers. Most recently, Dalvin Cook, who finished 6th among running backs in 2019. In the top 10, I’ve got two players tagged with black dots (Larry Johnson, Kareem Hunt) because they missed games for reasons other than injuries – Hunt with a league suspension and Johnson wasn’t ready to play as a rookie.
I see eight other who didn’t rank in the top 10 but at least made the top 20.
I would think that in a typical fantasy draft, there will be somebody in the top 4 overall who’ll be willing to roll the dice on McCaffrey. If he stays healthy, that team would have taken a nice step towards winning a title.
| BOUNCE-BACK RUNNING BACKS | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | Yr | Run | Rec | Tot | TD | PPR | Rk |
| 2005 | • Larry Johnson, K.C. | 3 | 1,750 | 343 | 2,093 | 21 | 368.3 | 3 |
| 2015 | Doug Martin, T.B. | 4 | 1,402 | 271 | 1,673 | 7 | 242.3 | 4 |
| 2013 | Knowshon Moreno, Den. | 5 | 1,038 | 548 | 1,586 | 13 | 296.6 | 4 |
| 1988 | Greg Bell, LAR | 5 | 1,212 | 124 | 1,336 | 18 | 265.6 | 5 |
| 2019 | Dalvin Cook, Min. | 3 | 1,135 | 519 | 1,654 | 13 | 296.4 | 6 |
| 2020 | • Kareem Hunt, Cle. | 4 | 841 | 304 | 1,145 | 11 | 218.5 | 10 |
| 1997 | Robert Smith, Min. | 5 | 1,266 | 197 | 1,463 | 7 | 225.3 | 10 |
| 2013 | Fred Jackson, Buff. | 8 | 890 | 387 | 1,277 | 10 | 234.7 | 11 |
| 2017 | Dion Lewis, N.E. | 7 | 896 | 214 | 1,110 | 10 | 203.0 | 13 |
| 2021 | Damien Harris, N.E. | 3 | 929 | 132 | 1,061 | 15 | 214.1 | 14 |
| 1992 | Dalton Hilliard, N.O. | 7 | 445 | 465 | 910 | 7 | 181.0 | 17 |
| 1990 | Kevin Mack, Cle. | 6 | 702 | 360 | 1,062 | 7 | 190.2 | 18 |
| 2018 | Adrian Peterson, Was. | 12 | 1,042 | 208 | 1,250 | 8 | 193.0 | 19 |
| 2005 | Chris Brown, Ten. | 3 | 851 | 327 | 1,178 | 7 | 184.8 | 20 |
| 1980 | Elvis Peacock, LAR | 3 | 777 | 213 | 990 | 9 | 178.0 | 20 |
| 2022 | Christian McCaffrey, Car. | 6 | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
—Ian Allan