Seahawks or Shanahan: Who is the biggest threat to Christian McCaffrey?

Seahawks-49ers decide winner of the NFL's best division since 2024

It’s been 13 days since the Seahawks played the previous “biggest game of the year” against the Rams. It’s only 3 days until the Seahawks play the most recent “biggest game of the year”.

Seems like the common denominator here is the Seattle Seahawks!

Seaside Joe is optimistic about Seattle’s chances to beat the 49ers on Saturday. Here are more reasons why.

Every week I answer questions about the Seahawks from Super Joes subscribers. It’s the perk of being a Super Joe! But you can also just be a Super Joe if you have a wish to support the newsletter for more than $5 per month. Just go here:

Karl Schab: What a season Christian McCaffrey is having! But is some of his success due to the defenses he’s facing? Would be interested in those numbers, and how our run defense compares. You can also compare our dual-threat run game to the defenses we’ve faced and how that looks to stack up against the Niners!

In a less flattering light, McCaffrey is having a real throwback season as a running back because the 49ers are leaning on him despite him having his worst year as a runner since his rookie year, in terms of yards per carry.

McCaffrey has 303 rushing attempts but only 1,179 yards (3.9 YPC).

The last RB to have over 300 attempts but under 1,200 yards or under 4.00 YPC was Najee Harris in 2021. But the last RB before Harris was Cedric Benson in 2010. So unless McCaffrey has a standout performance against the league’s top run defense on Saturday, he joins that very small group of high-volume/underwhelming seasons on the ground in the last 15 years.

As a receiver, Kyle Shanahan leans on McCaffrey out of necessity. Without any good receivers and George Kittle missing six games, McCaffrey has 122 targets, which is the 11th-most by a player at any position. He has more targets than A.J. Brown, Nico Collins, Tet McMillan, Davante Adams, Zay Flowers, and DeVonta Smith.

But he’s also a RB, meaning that the majority of his targets are short, and his 9.3 Y/C is the lowest of any player in the top-29 for targets.

This isn’t new either. McCaffrey averaged 126 targets per season in the first three years of the career when the Panthers were trying to salvage what little value was left in Cam Newton’s position as Carolina’s quarterback. Newton was essentially useless if he couldn’t check down to McCaffrey.

Is Brock Purdy going through something similar? Well, if you do subtract those passes to McCaffrey (79% completions, 4 TD/1 INT, 110.9 rating), sorta. Purdy’s stats essentially drop down to the fairly average season he had in 2024 without McCaffrey.

So I think that while people will look at the 17-game totals of roughly 1,200 rushing + 900 receiving and say “wow, that’s impressive!” (and I also think it’s impressive, but mostly because his body has held up at 400 touches), we’re still talking about a running back who has had twice as many bad rushing games as good rushing games; and as a receiver, you’re kind of just happy that San Francisco’s best receiving option is a running back.

And McCaffrey went from averaging 73 receiving yards per game in the first seven to 42 receiving yards per game in the last nine.

On the flip side, McCaffrey is coming off of his two best games of the season as a runner—per Next Gen Stats, McCaffrey’s best “Rushing Yards Over Expectation per Carry” were Week 16 and 17:

The Bears are also 29th in yards per carry allowed. The Seahawks are first in yards per carry allowed.

I don’t even really want to use Week 1 as an example because it was so long ago, but it is also true that McCaffrey was stuffed (22 att/69 yards) by the Seahawks and that was without Nick Emmanwori and before Drake Thomas took over for Tyrice Knight at linebacker.

It also sounds like the 49ers are trying to prepare their fans for Austen Pleasants to start at left tackle while Trent Williams attempts to come back quickly from a hamstring injury. Like most people, I don’t know anything about Pleasants except what’s readily available, which is that he’s a journeyman backup undrafted free agent; McCaffrey also had a great game (against the Bears) last week when Williams went out, so who knows?

But coming off of a short week (Sunday night to Saturday night), against a number one run defense, and his contributions as a receiver happened mostly in September, and his YPC is 0.5 below the league average, I’m not expecting Week 18 Christian McCaffrey to have a dominant performance.

If a 49ers fan somehow made it to Seaside Joe to read this, they’d say I’m just a hater. Regular readers of the newsletter know that I’m perfectly comfortable hyping up an opponent against the Seahawks when it’s warranted. But McCaffrey’s incredible volume totals don’t worry me nearly as much as when he was an actual home run hitter against Seattle’s porous run defense in 2023.

And 400 touches before we even get to Week 18? I’ll be stunned if McCaffrey stays off of IR in 2026. Shanahan is really willing to go all-in on McCaffrey out of necessity this season and not worry if it ends his career.

Most games with 8+ carries and under 4 YPC:

• 11 (McCaffrey, Jeanty, Judkins)

Most games with 4+ targets and under 100 yards:

• 16 (Tyler Warren)

• 15 (McCaffrey, Kelce, Troy Franklin, Schultz)

Grant: Is the 2025 NFC West the greatest division of all time?

Last season, the NFC North had a 15-2 team, 14-3 team, and 11-6 team. And the Bears were better than the Cardinals are now. The Lions had a higher point differential (+222) than any team in the NFC West now, and the Vikings and Packers were both 100+. Whereas Seattle leads the division at +181 and the 49ers are only +76 (hopefully going down on Saturday).

If it matters that none of those teams made the Super Bowl or NFC Championship, then I suppose I can’t quite answer the question until these playoffs conclude.

Just four years ago, the NFC West had the 12-5 Rams (SB winner), 10-7 49ers (NFC Championship game loser), and 11-6 Cardinals. The Seahawks were really just derailed by Russell Wilson’s injury. That division wasn’t as strong as this one probably, but did prove itself in the playoffs (no NFC West team lost to anybody other than another NFC West team).

The AFC North had three 11+ win teams in 2020 before the schedule expanded. It’s not that uncommon to have three double-digit win teams in the same division since 2002 realignment; maybe one every other year.

To be the greatest division of even the last two years, I think the Seahawks, 49ers, and Rams have to all prove themselves in the playoffs when it matters most. Depending on how that plays out, longer term conversations about history will become more prevalent and justifiable.

Chip Mac: Yesterday you shared that the 49ers defense is 25th in EPA/play, 22nd in run defense and 24th in third down defense. What is the Seahawk offensive game plan for Saturday? Pass to setup the run or run to setup the pass? Part two; who gets the most receiving target and which back get the most run plays Saturday?

On Part II, I don’t see why Jaxon Smith-Njigba wouldn’t get over 10 targets against the 49ers. JSN was targeted 13 times against the Niners in Week 1 and that was on only 21 routes. Getting targeted on over 60-percent of your routes is insane.

Even in the last four games, when it “seems like” JSN isn’t getting as much work, he has 44 targets.

If the 49ers focus literally all of their efforts on stopping JSN, A.J. Barner makes sense as a fallback. Six tight ends have been targeted 8+ times against the 49ers this season. Colston Loveland had 6 catches for 94 yards and 1 TD against San Francisco on Sunday.

JSN still had four times as many targets as Barner in Week 17 and Barner was second on the team in targets. I’m expecting Smith-Njigba to go well over 100 yards with a home run. I don’t think the 49ers can cover him.

By the way, I think if Zach Charbonnet replaced McCaffrey on the 49ers they might average more yards per carry. He’s having a more successful season on the ground than McCaffrey.

It seems like every time Kenneth Walker has a meh game, he follows it up with a great game. So I’ll go with Walker.

As you mentioned that I mentioned, the 49ers are arguably the worst first quarter run defense in the league. They also play really bad pass defense for the first three quarters. I expect Seattle to come out running the ball with Walker (then Charbonnet), setting up play action, popping a couple of deep shots or crossers to JSN, and targeting him or Barner in the red zone.

• Darnold has the second-most yards and the second-highest passer rating (132.2) on play action passes. He also has the highest EPA (estimated points added) per play action pass.

• JSN leads the NFL in yards (686) and TDs (6) and YPC (23.7) and EPA on play action passes.

Fans may remember that an early-season narrative was “Where’s the play action passes, Kubiak???” so we didn’t see much of that in Week 1. I feel like Kubiak’s ready to break that out against the 49ers this time.

Charley Filipek: By losing to the Atlanta Falcons, the LA Rams potentially fell 3 spaces in the 2026 NFL Draft for the 1st round draft pick which they are receiving from Atlanta.

As you mentioned, the pick going to the Rams is 12th right now and it might have been 9th if the Falcons lost. The ceiling for that pick was 8th but because the end with the Saints (who hold pick 8) then I think the pick can still reach the ceiling; but if the Falcons beat the Saints, the pick could drop up to a few spots more in the 15 range.

I really thought before the season that the Falcons could lose 13 or 14 games so for the Rams to only end up with that range in a class predicted to be a little bit—dare I say “boring”—at the top? Seems like a bit of a win for the rest of the NFC West.

Notably, the Falcons traded up for edge rusher James Pearce, who might win Defensive Rookie of the Year and is partly responsible for Atlanta’s winning streak.

Rusty: Is it just me, or does Zabel look like he’s hitting the rookie wall? He’s still making a lot of really good plays, but he’s being beaten more now than earlier in the season.

Chuck Turtleman: I came to ask this. Or more specifically, if he's just not used to the rigors of a long NFL season.

Could be. It’s a tough job to transition to from college.

I will add, just because I think it’s easy to overlook, is that the rookie wall must have changed in recent years, right? College players play more games now. Grey Zabel played 16 games last year and at least 15 games throughout his college career. The number in my head for how many games college players play used to be “idk…12?”

Now it’s got to be 14+.

And in college you’re distracted by school, or at least, that’s the theory. All you have to do in the NFL is focus on your conditioning and teams spend idk-how-much on people to help you do that. So I do have some questions about the modern “rookie wall”. I just don’t want it to be used as a “get out of jail free” card.

Rookie mistakes are fine. In fact, I’d rather hear that Zabel is just getting beaten by better players because of their experience than thinking that he’s tired before the playoffs start. I don’t really worry about that though—just a general reaction I had to the “rookie wall”.

Hey by the way—how about a shout out to Abraham Lucas? 99.7% of the snaps through 16 games!

There are more questions from Super Joes, but I have to be honest and tell you that I might not get to answering them until next year. Make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss them whenever next year arrives!

Seaside Joe 2494