The San Francisco 49ers have been without reigning offensive player of the year Christian McCaffrey all season.
McCaffrey had a positive MRI but traveled to Germany to get a second opinion from a specialist on the Achilles tendonitis he keeps dealing with.
According to CBS Sports, 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan has confirmed that McCaffrey went to Germany and also shed some light on what’s going on with his star running back, and it’s a mixed bag.
“I think we’ll get a better idea here over the next couple of weeks,” Shanahan said. “The whole point of putting him on IR is to guarantee that we couldn’t do anything for at least four weeks. And two weeks into it, the whole point was just to rest him for two weeks and not do that.
“And now, we’re going to start hitting the rehab harder and trying to get him back into football stuff and see how it responds. So we’ll see how he responds here. We’ve let him rest here for a couple of weeks.”
Shanahan also discussed McCaffrey’s reasons for going to Germany despite his clean MRI.
“Christian’s just seeing every specialist he can, doing all the little stuff that Christian does more than anybody I’ve ever been around.
“He is of full-time commitment to everything for his body year-round. And so, he’s been doing that stuff while not pushing it hard in rehab. And now, we’ll probably turn it up here in the next couple of weeks. I know he still has at least two more weeks before we could have an option to play him, and we’ll start testing that out sooner than later.”
There’s a chance McCaffrey can get back on the field as soon as he is eligible to return from IR, but it might still be too late to salve the Niners’ season.
