After leading the Washington Commanders in rushing for three straight seasons, Brian Robinson Jr. hasn’t gotten much work in 2025 with his new team.
The San Francisco 49ers acquired the former Hillcrest-Tuscaloosa and Alabama standout on Aug. 22 in exchange for a sixth-round selection in the 2026 NFL Draft.
In the first four games of 2025, Robinson has 22 rushing attempts for 96 yards and two receptions for 3 yards. He’s played 50 offensive snaps.
That type of usage makes Robinson look more like a safety net for Christian McCaffrey than a backup. After leading the NFL with 1,459 rushing yards in 2023, McCaffrey played in only four games in 2024, the third time in his eight seasons that McCaffrey has played seven or fewer games.
Forty-Niners general manager John Lynch acknowledged McCaffrey’s versatility and production make it hard to take him off the field, but he expects Robinson to contribute more as the season progresses.
“I think the reality when you look at Christian, especially since he’s been with us and at Carolina, he plays a large part of the snaps,” Lynch told NBC Sports Bay Area this week. “He don’t like coming off the field. He’s hard to take off the field because he’s good at everything. Now some people might say, ‘Hey, you have to save him for the long haul.’ Again, it’s a lot easier said than done.
“Now Brian’s very capable, and we know that. It’s certainly not, like, learning our playbook. He knows the plays. I think it’s more getting used to our style, the way we play our run game. It’s very specific what we ask our backs to do. And I think just getting more and more in tune with the way we like our backs to slash the one cut, pressing the holes and things of that nature, and the more he becomes accustomed with that, the more success he’ll have.
“He’s a really good football player. He’s been a blessing to have here. Great teammate. He’s smiling all the time. They love him in the running-back room. He’s been a great teammate and a great part of our team, and I think he’ll continue to contribute more and more.”
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Robinson’s average of 4.4 yards per carry is 1.1 greater than McCaffrey’s this season. McCaffrey has 225 yards on 69 rushing attempts while playing 228 offensive snaps. He ranks third in the NFL in receptions with 31 for 305 yards and two touchdowns.
San Francisco enters its Thursday night game against the Los Angeles Rams with a 3-1 record even though the 49ers rank last in the NFC in rushing yards and are the only team in the NFL that hasn’t scored a rushing touchdown this season.
Usually, rushing yards serve as the barometer of San Francisco’s success under coach Kyle Shanahan. In the previous eight seasons under Shanahan, the 49ers have won at least 10 games in every season they finished in the top seven in the NFL in rushing yards and won no more than six games in every season they finished 12th or worse in the league in rushing yards.
“I’m feeling good about it,” Robinson said of San Francisco’s ground game. “I just feel like we’re on the doorstep to just really getting the run game popping, and no better opportunity than this week to just get it popping off.”
The 49ers rank second in the NFL in passing yards, even though they’ve used two starting quarterbacks. The No. 1 QB, Brock Purdy, started the first and fourth games, and Mac Jones, a former teammate of Robinson’s at Alabama, started the second and third.
When the 49ers and Rams square off at 7:15 p.m. CDT Thursday at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, Jones will be back at quarterback for San Francisco. The 49ers announced on Wednesday afternoon that a toe injury had sent Purdy back to the bench for Week 5.
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“I think the preparation stay the same,” Robinson said on Tuesday about the uncertainty at quarterback. “Like we just got to focus on what’s being installed and how we got to do our job as a team, and regardless of what quarterback is in the game, we got to do our part.”
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