Christian McCaffrey: A 2025 Fantasy Football Hero, a 2026 Draft Dilemma

Christian McCaffrey has been an absolute Fantasy Football hero. In five of the six seasons he has played at least 16 games, he's averaged at least 21.1 PPR points. That's epic, rare production.

But McCaffrey is coming off a year with the most excessive usage of his life with a career-high 450 touches, the second-most for any RB since 2015, in 19 games. McCaffrey also turned the dreaded 3-0, an age when many expect a drop in efficiency from running backs.

We know McCaffrey will be a first-round pick in every draft this year. The question is whether he should be your first-round pick.

The 400-touch club

McCaffrey is the 18th running back with 400-plus touches in a year since 2010. Here's a snapshot of the prior 17 running backs and what happened the year after:

- Ten of the 17 running backs followed up their 400-touch season with an injury, a PPR per-game decline of at least 20%, or both. That's 59% of the sample, an easy majority. - Four of the 17 were close enough to their previous year's PPR per-game average to make Fantasy managers feel good about rostering them. Three others actually did better. Of these seven, just two were 28 years old or older. - Speaking of age, nine of the 17 were at least 26 years old in their follow-up seasons (10 if you include Le'Veon Bell, who sat out his following season). Only two of those nine stayed healthy and saw any improvement in their PPR point per-game average, with one other staying within a 20% range. That means six of nine older RBs (67%) either declined and/or got hurt.

Are catches better than carries?

Not all touches are created equally! Those 17 in the 400-touch club didn't all have 400 carries -- eight of them actually had 350 or fewer carries, like McCaffrey, who had 337 carries and 113 receptions. More catches, fewer carries. More yards after the catch, fewer body blows from defenders.

Of those eight, four stayed healthy and saw no worse than an 11 percent drop in Fantasy production the next season. The other four? One was the contract-angry Bell; one was Ray Rice, who saw his Fantasy PPR value cut in half; and McCaffrey represented the other two times when he got hurt in 2020 and 2024.

That's right. McCaffrey's been here before when he was younger and couldn't stay on the field either time. More on this a little later.

The 2,000-yard club

Between 2010 and 2024, there were 28 instances in which a running back amassed at least 2,000 total yards. Of the 28, only two stayed healthy and averaged more PPR points the following year. One of the two was indeed McCaffrey, who averaged 25.3 PPR points per game in 2023 after having 20.9 in 2022 and topped 2,000 total yards in both seasons (and four times overall in his career).

Another six saw virtually no drop-off from their prior year, and four more saw just a small decline -- between 10 to 20% -- from the year prior.

The remaining 16 running backs saw a drop-off the following year of at least 20%, missed at least half of the season due to injuries or a holdout, or both. That's nearly a 60% fail rate, almost identical to the 400-touch club.

And then there's the age factor: Just eight of the 28 RBs entered their age-27-or-older season the year after 2,000. Only McCaffrey in 2023 and Marshawn Lynch in 2013 had better years, and only Derrick Henry in 2025 saw a decline less than 20%. The remaining five saw a decline of at least 20% -- four were below 15 PPR points per game -- and two dealt with an injury.

CMC's own history

As you've read, McCaffrey has averaged at least 21 Fantasy points five times in his career. Those seasons were built on big workloads, anywhere from 19.4 to 25.2 touches per game.

2017: 17 games, 14.8 PPR/game, 209 total touches (12.3 per game), 1,203 total yards 👼 2018: 16 games, 24.2 PPR/game, 326 total touches (20.4 per game), 1,965 total yards 👍 2019: 16 games, 29.5 PPR/game, 403 total touches (25.2 per game), 2,392 total yards 🔥 2020: 3 games, 30.1 PPR/game, 76 total touches (25.3 per game), 374 total yards 😫 2021: 7 games, 18.2 PPR/game, 136 total touches (19.4 per game), 785 total yards 🙀 2022: 20 games, 20.9 PPR/game, 381 total touches (19.1 per game), 2,179 total yards 😍 2023: 19 games, 25.3 PPR/game, 417 total touches (22 per game), 2,443 total yards 😆 2024: 4 games, 12 PPR/game, 65 total touches (16.3 per game), 348 total yards 😡 2025: 19 games, 24.1 PPR/game, 450 total touches (23.7 per game), 2,314 total yards 👑

Last year was his fourth with at least 350 touches. Only once in his prior three seasons with even that much work has he been able to stay on the field for more than seven games.

He's had two opportunities to follow up a 400 -touch season with another big year and he failed both times.

And all of these numbers are virtually the same if you look at his past seasons with at least 2,000 total yards.

The case against a top-five RB finish

Independent of touches and total yards, the running backs who finished top five in PPR points per game over the last 20 years also did so just 32% of the time the previous year. That includes Jahmyr Gibbs and Bijan Robinson last year, and both are just 24 years old in 2026. Only seven RBs age 28 or older repeated in the top five in the last 20 years

McCaffrey has had two back-to-back top-five years when he's played more than half a season: 2018-19 and 2022-23. That 2023 season was his age-26 campaign. If he finishes in the top five this year, he'll be the first back in over 20 years to repeat in the top five at age 30.

Does his ceiling include finishing as the top back in Fantasy once again? No running back has finished the regular season atop the PPR per-game mountain two years in a row since Todd Gurley in 2017-18. And the last one before Gurley was Brian Westbrook in 2007-08. That's once-per-decade type stuff, and those RBs did it at age 24 and age 29, respectively.

CMC's rebuttal

McCaffrey is well aware of the number of touches he just had. On an episode of The Family Business Podcast , McCaffrey defended the volume of opportunities he gets and explained the best way for him (or any RB) to combat wear and tear.

"I like comparing it to a 3-point shooter in the NBA," he explained. You don't tell a 3-point shooter, 'Hey man, you got 10 shots this game. You have 10, you're only allowed to shoot eight 3s this game.' You don't do that because now, the guy, you're only thinking about 'I gotta make these eight count'. So then you start pressing. ... That's the dumbest thing you could ever tell a competitor.

"Is it hard to get 450 touches a year and practice Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, full speed? Yes. It's much easier to do it when you don't practice Wednesdays, and that's your re-gen day, and that's your day where you're getting your lift in and you're getting everything activated. It gives you a full extra day of rest.

"And by the way, I've seen guys get injured in the first quarter after three touches."

McCaffrey's explanation of how he intends to take care of his body makes sense, but wouldn't he have had those same intentions in 2020 (and 2021) after he had 403 touches in 2019? And again in 2024, after he had 417 touches in 2023? All three of those seasons were lost despite whatever intentions he had.

Where to rank Christian McCaffrey

Don't reach for McCaffrey, but don't ignore him either.

Will he decline? Much of the research notes when a running back had a decline of 20% or worse. Well, a 20% decline from his 2025 numbers would mean a PPR average of 19.6 PPR points, better than any season James Cook or Chase Brown has ever had. A 30% decline would mean a PPR average of 17.2 PPR points, still better than any year from Brown and better than all but six wide receivers last season. It would probably take a 40% decline, which would yield a 2025 Saquon Barkley-esque 14.7 PPR points per game, to make Fantasy managers unhappy.

I took this approach in my PPR rankings, putting McCaffrey ninth overall. I have him ahead of every player who I don't think can reach 17 PPR points per game, a list that includes Brown, Drake London, De'Von Achane and CeeDee Lamb. Your feelings may vary.

Had he been ranked lower, I might as well be in the business of predicting injury, and even though McCaffrey's history suggests that to be a factor, I can't do that in good conscience.

This means that I would draft McCaffrey in Round 1, but toward the back end. I think it's a reasonable risk worth taking given the adjusted expectation and the hope that he can stay healthy for most or all of the 2026 season. And once training camp gets into full swing, keeping tabs on how he fares -- and who's backing him up -- will be of utmost importance. Expect whoever McCaffrey's backup is (Jordan James seems to be the slight clubhouse leader as of June) to also be in high demand in the middle-to-late rounds.

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_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/football/news/christian-mccaffrey-fantasy-football-outlook-2026-bust-avoid-drafting/)._