Christian McCaffrey fantasy football insight from Hayden Winks - PPR Rankings

McCaffrey is coming off 450 touches, including the postseason. That's rare. It's why he easily finished as the RB1 overall in expected half PPR points (22.6 per game) and the RB1 overall in actual fantasy points (21.4). If he stays healthy, McCaffrey is obviously an elite RB1. The two primary questions are: 1) what are the odds he stays healthy, and 2) what level of an elite workload will he have? Historically, RBs coming off 400+ touches miss time and are less efficient. That's even more true in this age-29 range. It's far more likely McCaffrey does not repeat last year than that he does. That's okay! Kyle Shanahan has said it was incredible that CMC was able to play every week on that workload, but it's unsustainable. He later said, "I want him to have more juice. I want him to be fresher. He doesn't have to take that beating when it's unnecessary. I'm hoping we can have some other guys step up more this year so you don't feel like you need him on the field every play." The lack of juice was evident in the analytics: Shanahan noted that the receivers being better this year will allow that to happen. The 49ers also added a rookie RB to have some new depth behind CMC. I believe Shanny will use CMC less on a per-game basis. That was 23.7 touches per game last year, so I'd think 19-20 is a more appropriate range. Once again, that's okay! 13 games of McCaffrey handling 19 touches per game is very much worth a 1st-round pick in fantasy considering his goal-line and receiving work. Anything worse than that is impossible to project, and anything better than that is how you win...