In the days leading into the San Francisco 49ers' Week 8 matchup with the Houston Texans, we predicted that Christian McCaffrey could be in for a rough day against DeMeco Ryans' defense, and that's exactly how things played out in the Niners' 26-15 defeat.
Coming off his best overall game of the season against the Atlanta Falcons, one in which he gained a season-high 129 yards on the ground with a pair of touchdown runs and added another 72 yards on seven receptions, CMC gained a season-low 68 total yards from scrimmage against the Texans, as Houston held him to just 25 rushing yards, marking his lowest single-game total since 2018, and a season-low 43 receiving yards on a campaign-worst three receptions.
Despite the subpar performance in defeat, however, McCaffrey does still have something to celebrate, as he's now just the fifth player in NFL history to record both 5,000 rushing yards and 5,000 receiving yards.
Christian McCaffrey is just the 5th member of the 5,000/5,000 club
Reaching 5,000 regular-season rushing yards hasn't been a thing for McCaffrey for a couple of years now.
After amassing 3,980 yards on the ground during his five-plus seasons with the Carolina Panthers, the Stanford alum added another 746 after joining the 49ers during the 2022 campaign and ultimately surpassed the 5,000-yard mark with a 10-yard run against the New York Giants in Week 3 of the 2023 season. With his 25 rushing yards against the Texans, McCaffrey now has 6,877 for his career.
Heading into the matchup with Houston, the 29-year-old needed just 18 yards to reach 5,000. And after a 4-yard catch in the third quarter, he surpassed the mark in the fourth with a 27-yard reception. Two plays later, he added a 12-yarder to bring his career total to 5,025 yards on 580 catches.
The other four players to reach this historic feat, all of whom were running backs, are Lenny Moore, Marcus Allen, Marshall Faulk, and Tiki Barber.
Player Seasons Games Team(s) Rush Yds Rec. Yds
Lenny Moore 1956-1967 143 Colts 5,174 6,039
Marcus Allen 1982-1997 222 Raiders, Chiefs 12,243 5,411
Marshall Faulk 1994-2005 176 Colts, Rams 12,279 6,875
Tiki Barber 1997-2006 154 Giants 10,449 5,183
Christian McCaffrey 2017-2025 103 Panthers, 49ers 6,877 5,025
With 490 rushing yards and 559 receiving yards on the season, McCaffrey is still on pace to become just the fourth in NFL history to record 1,000 yards of each kind in a single season, an exclusive club that he actually already joined in 2019 while with the Panthers. If he can do so again, however, he'd become the first to accomplish the feat twice.
McCaffrey and the Niners as a whole will look to get back on track this Sunday against the New York Giants.