As the grandson of an Olympic 100 meters silver medalist, it is little surprise that Christian McCaffrey has made a habit of leaving NFL defenders in his wake.
The 27-year-old running back is one of the San Francisco 49ers’ most potent offensive weapons as the club prepares for a Super Bowl rematch with the Kansas City Chiefs in Las Vegas on Sunday.
McCaffrey heads into the biggest game of his life in blistering form after a regular season campaign that saw him amass 1,459 rushing yards with 14 touchdowns, thrusting him into contention for the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award.
An explosive game-changing talent with the ability to pierce the most iron-clad defenses, McCaffrey has been pivotal in helping the 49ers back to the Super Bowl.
On Sunday, he hopes to follow in the footsteps of his father, Ed McCaffrey, a former wide receiver who won three Super Bowls with the 49ers and Denver Broncos.
“To win the Super Bowl is something I’ve been dreaming about since I was a kid,” McCaffrey said Wednesday.
“I watched my dad win (the Super Bowl), so to be able to do that would be awesome.”
Sporting success runs in the McCaffrey family.
His mother Lisa was an accomplished soccer player, while his maternal grandfather, Dave Sime, was a star of track and field in the 1950s, equalling the world 100m record before taking silver in the event at the 1960 Rome Olympics.
That kind of electrifying raw speed has become one of McCaffrey’s calling cards during his seven seasons in the NFL, which followed a record-breaking college career at Stanford University.
McCaffrey says he honed his sprinting under the tutelage of his father, while 49ers running back coach Bobby Turner has helped him get a headstart through his mental approach.
“As far as speed training goes, my dad always gave good advice. He was someone who took a lot pride in that. A lot of people used to call him slow and he took that to heart and got as fast as humanly possible,” McCaffrey said.
“Speed comes from knowing what you’re doing. Especially in football — you can play fast if you know exactly what to do on every play, if you’re good at reading coverages, you know where to put your eyes.
“(Running back coach) Bobby Turner always says ‘Run with your eyes and your feet will follow.’ I think that’s the first part of it. But in terms of the actual mechanics, you’ve got to have good genes.”
No one is questioning McCaffrey’s genetic pedigree.
He pursued track and field before his NFL career and clocked a respectable personal best of 10.5 seconds for the 100m.
Golden dream
McCaffrey was realistic enough to recognize, though, that he was likely to come up short at the highest level of sprinting.
“I always wanted to run track. But when you get to that Olympic level speed, that college level speed, that’s a different level of speed,” McCaffrey told AFP.
“It’s the same in other sports. You hear people say, ‘Oh I could play pro football or I could play pro basketball.’ And it’s just not true. And it’s the same in track.”
He admits, however, that if he could choose any other sporting achievement outside the NFL, it would be following in his grandfather’s footsteps.
“Winning the gold medal in the 100m dash,” he said. “Being the fastest man in the world — that would be awesome.”
Instead, he might just have to settle for being the fastest man at Sunday’s Super Bowl.
