CMC's latest do-it-all effort has Kittle's goal on track

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Through insinuation, San Francisco 49ers manager Kyle Shanahan wanted Sunday's crippled against the Atlanta Falcons to beryllium a large nighttime for moving backmost Christian McCaffrey.

On Saturday, Shanahan challenged his squad to get 40 carries against the Falcons, a fig that would signify the Niners controlled the enactment of scrimmage and handed it to McCaffrey aboriginal and often.

Tight extremity George Kittle, making his instrumentality from a close hamstring wounded that caused him to miss 5 games, was little subtle.

"Every Saturday night, our choky extremity manager [Brian] Fleury wants each the choky ends to get up successful beforehand of the country and acceptable a goal," Kittle said. "Anywhere from predominate the edges, choky extremity touchdown, immoderate goals. And my extremity this week was CMC [to be] NFC Player of the Week. And if I really called that, that mightiness beryllium the champion conjecture of each time."

After the 49ers had enactment the finishing touches connected a 20-10 win to amended to 5-2, Kittle's extremity looked exceedingly realistic, if not likely. McCaffrey, who has remained the focal constituent of the Niners discourtesy contempt seemingly non-stop injuries surrounding him, had his finest show successful a play afloat of them.

By the clip McCaffrey was through, he'd posted a season-high 129 rushing yards connected 24 carries with 2 touchdowns connected the ground. He besides led the Niners successful receiving with 7 catches for 72 yards, including a 17-yard drawback connected third-and-13 earlier his game-sealing 4-yard touchdown run.

Those 201 scrimmage yards were the astir by McCaffrey arsenic a Niner and accounted for 62% of the team's yards from scrimmage, the highest percent for immoderate subordinate successful a crippled this season. And portion the 49ers didn't rather get to 40 rushes connected the night, they did get to 39 for a season-high 174 yards, an mean of 4.5 yards per carry, besides a play high.

In the process, McCaffrey continued to etch his sanction successful some franchise and league grounds books erstwhile it comes to all-purpose production. To wit:

• This was McCaffrey's sixth crippled this play with 50-plus rushing yards and 50-plus receiving yards, the astir by immoderate subordinate successful NFL past done a team's archetypal 7 games.

• It was McCaffrey's ninth vocation crippled with 100-plus rushing yards and 50-plus receiving yards, tied with Jim Brown and Priest Holmes for the 3rd astir successful NFL history.

• McCaffrey joined Roger Craig (1988) arsenic the lone 49ers with 7 consecutive games of 100-plus scrimmage yards to unfastened a season.

Through Sunday night's games, McCaffrey leads the NFL successful scrimmage yards (981) and his six full touchdowns is tied for 4th most. Despite the tally crippled struggling mightily done the archetypal six games, McCaffrey is connected gait to person implicit 1,000 yards each rushing and receiving and, astatine his existent rate, would surpass the NFL grounds of 1,097 receiving yards by a moving backmost successful a play with country to spare.

"He's huge," Shanahan said. "He's the astir accordant subordinate I've been around. He conscionable allows you to enactment connected track. He gets each gait successful the tally crippled and much and what helium does successful the walk crippled ... it's uncommon that you're going to propulsion a shot to him and not get a completion."

After different do-it-all performance, McCaffrey was speedy to recognition his teammates. It was nary coincidence that the 49ers' tally crippled took disconnected upon Kittle's return. McCaffrey had 20 rushes for 126 yards and 2 touchdowns erstwhile Kittle was connected the field, compared to 4 rushes for 3 yards erstwhile helium was not.

Although Kittle's streak of 114 games with a reception ended, his pr...