We have seen our last of Christian McCaffrey in the Cardinal and White. Regardless of how you feel about the running back's decision a few weeks ago to forgo his senior season in favor of the NFL or his more controversial choice to bypass this week's Sun Bowl, there can be no disagreement about the legacy he leaves.
Without question, McCaffrey is not only the greatest running back in school history, but quite possibly the greatest player, regardless of position, ever to play for the Cardinal. A quick perusal of the Stanford record book, an accounting of the past hundred years or so of football on the Farm, leaves little doubt. In almost every category you might use to measure a running back, McCaffrey's name sits at or near the top of the list. But even as impressive as the accomplishments on the chart to the right may be, there's more to the story.
The other stars in the universe of Stanford tailbacks -- Darrin Nelson, Toby Gerhart, and Stepfan Taylor -- enjoyed long careers, but McCaffrey shot through the sky like a comet. In two seasons as the starter he amassed 3,622 yards rushing, more than Brad Muster, Tyler Gaffney, and Glyn Milburn had in their careers. In his transcendent sophomore season in 2015, he ran for a school-record 2,019 yards, more than Tommy Vardell had in his four-year tenure. In fact, only ten other Stanford backs have topped that number in their entire careers. Not only does McCaffrey hold the Stanford single-game rushing mark, he's also second on that list (243 vs. UCLA, 2015), and he's responsible for five of the ten biggest single-game rushing performances in the 126-year history of Stanford football.
But McCaffrey is more than just a running back. The one number that truly quantifies his importance to his team and his impact on a football game is his all-purpose yardage, the sum of his rushing, receiving, and returning yards. Stanford athletics Hall of Famer Glyn Milburn stood alone in these categories for almost a quarter of a century before McCaffrey came along. Last year McCaffrey racked up an NCAA-record 3,864 all-purpose yards, improving on Milburn's mark by a mind-blowing seventy-two percent. This season, in what many detractors labelled a down year for McCaffrey, he somehow managed 2,327 -- more than Milburn's old record.
The numbers are undeniable, but they don't begin to tell the story.
Christian McCaffrey was a player who had to be seen to be appreciated. You had to be in the stands to feel the electricity that pulsed through a stadium as he waited beneath a punt or swerved around a linebacker. You had to be on your couch with your remote control rewinding a play over and over again, your phone buzzing with texts that were all variations on the same theme: Did you see what he just did?
Stanford fans were privileged to watch him over the past three autumns, and it was my pleasure to describe his exploits in this space from week to week. The first time I wrote about him was on National Signing Day in February of 2014, back when he was more potential and possibility than anything else:
His versatility out of the backfield leads Rivals.com to rank him as the third-best all-purpose back, a list sometimes populated by players not considered to be pure runners, but McCaffrey's film shows a dominant running back who's fast enough to get around the edge, quick enough to cut back against the grain of the defense, and smart enough to hit the correct hole... So how good might this young man be? His combination of running and pass-catching ability makes it difficult to find a comparison in recent Stanford history (Glyn Milburn comes to mind), but it's possible that he could end up making some history of his own. It wouldn't be a surprise if McCaffrey develops into an All-American or even a Heisman candidate. He's that good.
Yes, he was that good, and it didn't take him long to show us. On the last Saturday of August in 2014, McCaffrey made his Stanford debut against UC Davis, and it was clear he'd one day develop into something special. As I described it then:
...the most electric moment of the game came on the Cardinal's next possession... Young Christian McCaffrey, the true freshman who has been drawing nothing but raves from players, coaches, and observers throughout the summer, lined up in the backfield to Hogan's left. He ran a simple route, bending around the clashing linemen and opening up to Hogan just five yards beyone the line of scrimmage. Hogan's pass was high, but it didn't matter. (It's McCaffrey's pass-catching skills that separate him from other elite backs.) McCaffrey stretched high to make the grab, turned upfield, and simply vanished, running 45 yards untouched down the middle of the field.
This was more than just another touchdown, and it wasn't just a young kid getting a taste of action in a game that was out of hand -- it was an announcement. Some fans were surprised when Shaw hinted that we might see McCaffrey get some touches this fall, and the prevailing sentiment, I think, was that it would be foolish to burn up his redshirt year. But in the time that it took McCaffrey to race into the end zone, any doubt was erased. The future is now, and we can expect McCaffrey to be a big part of the Cardinal attack this season and in seasons to come. (We can also expect to see him in New York one day posing with a trophy, but that's a discussion for another time.)
Even though those thoughts of a Heisman wouldn't become realistic until his sophomore year, we continued to see flashes of brilliance from McCaffrey throughout his freshman season, but it wasn't until the Foster Farms Bowl that it became clear he'd soon be the focal point of the offense:
...another eye-popping play by McCaffrey. He fielded a Maryland punt at his own 24, but when he was immediately wrapped up by Maryland's Jacquille Veli, he shook off the would be tackler like a seventh grader shrugging off his backpack... He sprinted off to his left and found the sidelines, then hurdled the Maryland punter for an extra five yards before being pushed out of bounds at the Maryland 45 after a 31-yard gain. The cameras quickly found the elder McCaffrey in the warmth of a luxury suite, and mugging for the camera, Easy Ed pointed down at his son and struck a Heisman pose. No one would be surprised.
In 2015 all those Heisman allusions suddenly seemed much more realistic. Each week brought another virtuoso performance -- a handful of two-hundred yard games, a four-touchdown performance against UCLA, and a highlight reel that seemed to have assured him a Heisman Trophy. Once again, however, the numbers couldn't begin to quantify what we were seeing on the field.
After having been denied his Heisman in a vote that almost everyone west of the SEC immediately decried as a travesty, McCaffrey arrived at the Rose Bowl and took advantage of the stage. He wasn't just the best player on the field that day, he was the best by a country mile. On the Cardinal's first play from scrimmage, McCaffrey introduced himself to the Iowa defense using the mirror image of his debut play against UC Davis two seasons earlier. Even though they had certainly prepared for plays like this, the Hawkeyes had no chance. McCaffrey was that rare athlete who changes the parameters of the game, bending reality to his will. On that January day he wasn't just a football player, he was a phenomenon. He was the Roadrunner effortlessly eluding Wile E. Coyote, he was a mongoose laughing at a cobra's futile strike, he was Neo dodging bullets in The Matrix. He opened the Rose Bowl with a 75-yard touchdown, and he was just getting started. He'd finish the day with a handful of Rose Bowl records, the Offensive MVP Trophy, and the win. And certainly, he left more than a few East Coast Heisman voters regretting their ballots.
Almost immediately the question became what McCaffrey could possibly do for an encore in 2016. During the spring and summer Coach David Shaw reminded us that players almost always get stronger and faster from their sophomore to junior seasons, and that McCaffrey was no different.
He was the center of attention at Pac-12 Media Day in July (left), but seemed just as poised and relaxed dealing with that crush of media as he was navigating the line of scrimmage on third and short. When asked about the Heisman, he complimented his offensive line; when asked to provide personal goals, he spoke about winning games; when questioned about his improvement, he talked about Bryce Love and Cameron Scarlett. Reporters from up and down the conference stood poised with notebooks and voice recorders looking for soundbites to drive their feature stories, but McCaffrey gave them nothing. He was the face of college football, gracing the glossy covers of dozens of season previews, but on that afternoon he was a teammate, nothing more.
Was it a charade? Was he coached to pump up his teammates instead of himself? At the end of the day I pulled Coach Shaw aside and told him how impressed I continued to be with how his players represent the University at events like this, and I mentioned McCaffrey in particular.
"I have to tell you this story," he said. The week before McCaffrey had served as a college counselor at The Open, a Nike-sponsored camp for the nation's elite high school prospects, many of whom were being recruited by Stanford. "So Christian came back from The Open, and the first thing he said to me was, 'Coach, keep recruiting the type of players you're recruiting.' The difference between the Stanford recruits and the others was very apparent to him."
McCaffrey got it. He was supremely confident in his own abilities -- there were no shortage of profiles in which he spoke out against the racial bias he felt as a high school player, or wondered why writers consistently praised his work ethic instead of his athleticism -- but he also placed his team and his teammates ahead of himself.
The season didn't quite go as planned -- surprising losses and an injury ended Heisman talks before Halloween -- but McCaffrey was still brilliant in 2016. As the Cardinal closed with a five-game winning streak, McCaffrey was in high gear, scoring 12 touchdowns while rushing for 991 yards on an otherworldly 7.45 yards per carry. He even topped his own single-game rushing mark during that stretch, dropping an easy 284 on Cal on 31 carries.
It wasn't long after the regular season finale against Rice that McCaffrey announced he'd be forgoing his senior season in favor of the NFL, and it wasn't long after that he withdrew from the Sun Bowl. Emotions ran high in the fanbase, but even those who criticized McCaffrey and questioned his dedication to the team cannot question what he has meant to all of us.
Personally, the moment I'll never forget came in the Rose Bowl against Iowa, McCaffrey's 63-yard touchdown on a second quarter punt return. Even though the clock told us the game wasn't yet half over, the outcome had long been decided. The only drama remaining revolved around number five and what he would do next; the Hawkeyes had gone from opponents to props in the Christian McCaffrey Show. Here's what I wrote:
The player who should've won the Heisman had taken over the Rose Bowl, and somehow it was completely expected and wholly unbelievable all at once. As he sprinted towards the far corner of the field, I couldn't even applaud. Instead I collapsed onto the shoulders of my seat mate, completely overwhelmed by what I was seeing... So in that moment, as McCaffrey was sprinting across the grass and breaking hearts across the Midwest, I didn't cheer; I focused. I knew that one day I would have to tell the story of what happened in Pasadena on the first day of 2016, and I knew that I'd have to get it right.
And really, that's a responsibility we all have. We all have to get it right. Years from now when we tell the story of Christian McCaffrey, we'll have to explain that as mind-boggling as the numbers might be, they don't tell the story. There are no numbers that can measure the anticipation he brought to every kickoff, no numbers that can describe the buzzing of the crowd after a phenomenal run, whether it was for seventy yards or just seven. He hasn't just been the best player in college football over the past two seasons, he's been one of the best ever to play the game. More than that, he's been ours. Every fan in America admired and wanted McCaffrey, but he was ours.
Thank you, Christian. Thank you for everything.
