100 Questions: Fantasy Football 2024 (San Francisco 49ers)

As we head toward the start of the 2024 NFL and fantasy football season, FTN Fantasy editor-in-chief Daniel Kelley is asking (and attempting to answer) the 100 most pressing questions in fantasy football. This is 100 Questions. Today: The San Francisco 49ers.

It’s easy to forget now, but after starting as the 49ers head coach in 2017, it took Kyle Shanahan until Week 13 of the 2022 season to have a head coaching record over .500. The 49ers lost each of his first nine games as head coach (they were 0-9 with 143 points scored and 239 allowed) en route to a 6-10 record, followed up by a 4-12 in 2018. They had a big 13-3 season in 2019 but slipped back to 6-10 in 2020. After a mediocre 10-7 third-place finish in 2021 (albeit with a Wild Card), the 49ers were 35-41 under Shanahan with a Super Bowl appearance, but the team hadn’t managed to produce a quarterback (including mortgaging its future for a trade-up for Trey Lance) and wasn’t the juggernaut we know it as today.

Then they started slow in 2022. Loss in Week 1. Loss in Week 3. Back-to-back losses in Weeks 6 and 7. The 49ers were 3-4, 38-46 under their fancy head coach. Lance had struggled and gotten hurt. Jimmy Garoppolo had been Jimmy Garoppolo.

The team went on a winning streak from there, though. And in Week 13, Garoppolo got hurt (again) and Brock Purdy had to take over on the second drive. They beat the Dolphins 33-17 to bring Shanahan to 47-46 as the 49ers coach, and now it’s two years later and he’s up to 64-51 with four playoff appearances, three division titles and two Super Bowl appearances.

We like to say that Shanahan made Purdy’s career, and that’s probably at least somewhat true. But it’s also true that Purdy might have saved Shanahan’s. If the 49ers don’t turn things around in 2022 (and given what we saw from them after Purdy went down in the playoffs, they might not have), Shanahan might not even get a 2023 season with the team, let alone be considered, as he is now, one of the brightest minds in coaching.

The Questions

86. How Worried Should We Be About Christian McCaffrey?
87. How High Is Brock Purdy’s Ceiling?
88. Are There Any Deeper Names to Know, Or Is It Just the Big Ones?

100 Questions for 2024: San Francisco 49ers

How Worried Should We Be About Christian McCaffrey?

INGLEWOOD, CA - OCTOBER 30: San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (23) celebrates after an NFL football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams on October 30, 2022 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA. (Photo by Ric Tapia/Icon Sportswire) — INGLEWOOD, CA – OCTOBER 30: San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (23) celebrates after an NFL football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams on October 30, 2022 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA. (Photo by Ric Tapia/Icon Sportswire)

That’s a weird way to frame a question about the consensus 1.01, right? Well, when someone is so obviously the correct first overall pick, you don’t need to talk about upside. It’s baked in. You need to discuss that person’s downside.

And while McCaffrey is the fanciest of fancy, he does have some downsides we need to worry about. Here they are, and then some counters to each:

He’s 28 now. Only four backs 28 or older have topped 300 PPR points in a season since 2010, and only Derrick Henry in 2022 has done so since 2014. Age comes.
- Counter: Only four 27-year-olds have topped 300 PPR points in the same time frame (including McCaffrey last year). He’s already bucking a trend, and he’s shown no signs other than the turn of a calendar page that he can’t do it again.
He had 339 touches last year. Guys with that many touches one year drop off the next — in 50 players sampled over the last decade, the average has gone from 338.9 touches and 21.9 PPR points per game to 233.3 and 16.0.
- Counter: Only six of our 50 players in the sample increased their touches the next year, and one of them was … McCaffrey last year. When the dude is on the field, he gets the touches, and there’s not much reason to expect that to change yet.
He’s an injury risk — remember when he played only 10 games across 2020 and 2021 combined?
- Counter: McCaffrey is now seven years into his career and has played every game (other than sitting out a meaningless Week 18 last year) in five of seven years. He’s an injury risk inasmuch as every running back and every football player is an injury risk, but there’s no real reason to think he’s a particular injury risk, and that’s true even considering his ongoing battle with a calf strain.
Trent Williams is holding out. Per the FTN Fantasy StatsHub, D’Andre Swift was second in the league in yards on runs to the left last year, at 480. McCaffrey was first, at 704. The 49ers offense ran through Williams at left tackle more than any offense ran through any lineman, and while the overall line has improved around him (it’s 14^th in the FTN Fantasy offensive line rankings), a Williams absence would be crushing.
- Counter: Honestly? Don’t really have one beyond “They have to get Williams in camp and under contract, and they know they have to do that, so they absolutely are going to find a way to get it done.”
Stuff happens. Literally, that’s it. We hadn’t had a back with multiple overall RB1 fantasy finishes in PPR since Priest Holmes before McCaffrey had his second such season last year. Just the odds say he’s unlikely to do it again.
- Counter: I mean, you’re asking me to counter randomness, which is silly, but the argument is if every other back in football has the exact same season in 2024 as 2023, McCaffrey could still drop off by one hundred points and still be the overall RB1.

There are lots of reasons for concern. There are just as many for optimism. That’s why McCaffrey is the overall RB1 (and should be), but also why, if I’m drafting a lot of teams and somehow have the 1.01 in all of them, McCaffrey is only my first overall pick half the time, not all the time.

How High Is Brock Purdy’s Ceiling?

Brock Purdy has 21 starts and one “played basically the whole game” for the 49ers. He’s put up 5,588 passing yards with 44 touchdowns against 14 interceptions, a 112.7 passer rating. He’s also run for 154 yards and 3 scores. That’s 18.9 fantasy points per game. And he actually got better — he averaged 18.1 points per game in his out-of-nowhere run to end the 2022 season, then 19.2 last year. He was fantasy’s QB6, and that was with missing Week 18 because nobody cared.

Despite that, Purdy is QB11 in ADP for 2024. So something is up. Either the drafting community is underrating him, or literally his entire career resume thus far is overrating him. And that’s almost literally true — Purdy only has two career games under 11.5 fantasy points (only three under 14.7). One was Week 6 last year against the Browns’ top-ranked defense, in a game where he lost Deebo Samuel and Christian McCaffrey in the second half. The other was Week 16 against the Ravens’ almost-top-ranked defense, Purdy’s only truly terrible game of his career (4 interceptions).

Purdy doesn’t run much — he’s not slow, but he only has one career regular-season game of more than 20 yards (plus a 48-yard playoff game), with single-digit yards 18 times in his 22 games. That lack of rushing success is likely to keep him from ever contending for overall QB1 status even if he takes another leap as a passer, but the friendliness of the 49ers’ offensive scheme should keep him solidly relevant in fantasy otherwise.

SANTA CLARA, CA - DECEMBER 11: San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) celebrates a touchdown in the second quarter of an NFL game between the San Francisco 49ers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers on December 11, 2022, at LeviÕs Stadium, in Santa Clara, CA. (Photo by Tony Ding/Icon Sportswire) — SANTA CLARA, CA – DECEMBER 11: San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) celebrates a touchdown in the second quarter of an NFL game between the San Francisco 49ers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers on December 11, 2022, at LeviÕs Stadium, in Santa Clara, CA. (Photo by Tony Ding/Icon Sportswire)

You know who Purdy sounds like? He’s basically C.J. Stroud without the pedigree. Excellent regular-season success, not much with the legs, elite stable of weapons (Purdy’s are better than Stroud’s, in fact), coaching staff and scheme specifically tailored to make him a success. Yes, Stroud was the second overall draft pick and Purdy was the last, but if you are just taking what they’ve done in the NFL, they’re basically the same guy. Stroud is the QB5 in ADP, Purdy the QB11. That’s bonkers. They should both be around the QB8. You can use Stroud’s pedigree as a tiebreaker if you want, but that’s about it.

Are There Any Deeper Names to Know, Or Is It Just the Big Ones?

One of the keys to fantasy is uncovering otherwise overlooked guys. It’s not hard to say A.J. Brown will be a star, it’s much harder to identify Puka Nacua, even Zack Moss. The 49ers have five elite weapons (Purdy is QB11 in ADP, McCaffrey RB1, Deebo Samuel WR15, Brandon Aiyuk WR16, George Kittle TE6), but the fantasy community doesn’t appear to care even a little about anyone else in San Francisco, with no other 49er going in the top 50 at his position. And that’s rare — usually there’s some random handcuff/up-and-comer/sneaky play on the good/exciting rosters who catches people’s eyes.

So who should be that person in San Francisco?

(Everything that follows assumes Brandon Aiyuk remains on the team, because if he gets traded, we will suddenly see half a dozen different names floated as potential fast risers in San Francisco.)

The first topic is a handcuff. The 49ers have Elijah Mitchell, Jordan Mason and rookie fourth-rounder Isaac Guerendo. The problem there should be both twofold and obvious — Christian McCaffrey doesn’t leave the field much, and if he does, we have no real idea who will get the lion’s share of the work. If you are hell-bent on handcuffing McCaffrey, Mitchell is the name to know right now, but that’s like a 40-30-30 situation as far as confidence goes. So no, you don’t need to go out of your way to get a secondary 49ers running back.

Maybe a backup quarterback? After all, Joshua Dobbs Passtronaut-ed his way into everybody’s hearts last year, with five top-10 weeks. He was the QB20 despite losing two different jobs! Of course, he was also actually a very bad real-world quarterback, and Purdy hasn’t shown any particular injury proneness. No, not Dobbs.

Pass-catchers! Here, we again have the “too many names for too few opportunities” problem that we had at running back. The team spent a first-round pick on Ricky Pearsall back in April and circled back with a fourth-rounder on Jacob Cowing. And they didn’t stop, re-signing would-have-been-Super-Bowl-MVP-if-they-had-held-on Jauan Jennings to a two-year deal in May. Deebo Samuel has averaged 13.2 games per year in his career and Brandon Aiyuk is pretty disgruntled, so there might be a space for a secondary 49ers receiver to perform in 2024, but if you think there’s any clear choice between Pearsall and Jennings (at least, and we can discuss Cowing), I think you’re wrong.

Translation: Stars-and-scrubs, baby. If there’s any reason to think one of the big names is about to miss time in San Francisco, there will be a mad dash to throw FAAB at all of the alternatives. And sure, by that argument, maybe if you have the roster space it makes sense to stash an Elijah Mitchell or a Jauan Jennings as a high-ceiling insurance policy. But there’s a very possible scenario where someone does have space and stashes Mitchell and Jennings only to see Guerendo and Pearsall get the work if it comes to it. That’s why it’s only an “if you have space” scenario.