The 49ers shuffled a lot of running backs in and out of the lineup before they traded for Christian McCaffrey last year, but his arrival has led to a change in the way they divvy up playing time.
McCaffrey took the lion’s share of the snaps with the 49ers last year and he’s taken almost all of them this year. Elijah Mitchell played 10 snaps in the season opener and did not get on the field at all during Sunday’s win over the Rams. McCaffrey played all 57 offensive snaps and head coach Kyle Shanahan said on Monday that he needs to do a better job of making sure Mitchell is in the mix.
“Yeah, we definitely got to get Elijah in there more and do better with our rotation than we did yesterday,” Shanahan said, via 49ersWebzone.com. “That wasn’t the plan going in. It just ended up that way, and I got to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
It is a short week for the Niners before Thursday’s game against the Giants and that could make it easier to remember to spread the work around, but having a back with McCaffrey’s skills does make it more difficult to pull him off the field.
