49ers Christian McCaffrey could join some elite company on Sunday

Christian McCaffrey is this year's Offensive Player of the Year, and he could join just two other players in NFL history by the time the Super Bowl is over. The best offensive player in the NFL this year deservingly won the OPOY award earlier this week. San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey was the engine that made the 49ers offense run in 2023.

They are on the cusp of winning the Super Bowl and could see their stud running back go down in history. In the 2023 NFL regular season, McCaffrey rushed for 1,459 yards on 272 carries. He averaged 5.4 yards per attempted and rushed for 14 touchdowns. He also caught 67 passes for 564 yards and another seven touchdowns.

In total, McCaffrey had 2,023 yards from scrimmage and 21 scrimmage touchdowns, both leading the NFL. And crazily enough, this is the second time in his career that he's lead the NFL in touches, scrimmage yards, and scrimmage touchdowns. That first came in 2019 when he was still on the Carolina Panthers.

Well, with CMC playing in the Super Bowl, he has a chance to do something just two other men in NFL history have done, and that is win both the Offensive Player of the Year and the Super Bowl MVP in the same season. The two other players who have done that are Cooper Kupp in 2021 and Joe Montana in 1989.

And if the 49ers do win, CMC seems to be a safe bet to take him the SB MVP award. Marred by injuries earlier in his career, McCaffrey played in all 17 games in 2022 and played in 16 games in 2023, and the one game he missed was because the Niners had already clinched the No. 1 seed in the NFC, so it's been quite a turnaround in terms of availability for the dual-threat running back.

I don't think the 49ers can win this game without a big performance from McCaffrey. It's not that their one-dimensional, but CMC has been so consistently good the entire season that is just doesn't seem to be in their nature to win a game without their most valuable player having a day.

Can Christian McCaffrey become just the third person in the history of the NFL to win both the Offensive Player of the Year award and the Super Bowl MVP?