San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffery comes from a football and overall athletic family. His father, Ed, and his brother, Max, played wide receiver in the NFL, while he had two young brothers, Luke and Dylan, who played major college football.
His mother, Lisa, played soccer at Stanford, and her father, David Sime, was an Olympic silver medal-winning sprinter. Ed and Lisa McCaffery first met when they were athletes at Stanford.
Ed McCaffrey’s NFL Career
In the third round of the 1991 draft, the New York Giants selected Ed McCaffery after he played four years at Stanford. In three seasons in New York, he had 92 catches, 1,091 yards, and seven touchdowns in 48 games.
McCaffery moved on to play the 1994 season with the 49ers and had 11 receptions in 16 games. He had one catch in Super Bowl XXIX when the 49ers defeated the San Diego Chargers.
After the 1994 season, McCaffery moved on to play for the Denver Broncos and found a home playing with future Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway. In 1995, McCaffery started his first season in Denver with 39 receptions and two touchdowns.
He set a career-high with seven touchdown receptions in 1996 and topped that the next season with eight touchdown catches.
McCaffery had 12 receptions in four 1997 playoff games when the Broncos upset the Green Bay Packers to win Super Bowl XXXII. He had five receptions for 72 yards in the next season’s Super Bowl against the Atlanta Falcons, as Denver won back-to-back championships.
In 1998, McCaffrey was named second-team All-Pro and made his only career Pro Bowl after his first season with more than 1,000 receiving yards and a career-high ten touchdown catches. He topped 1,000 receiving yards the next two seasons and had a career-high 101 receptions in 2000.
McCaffrey suffered a season-ending broken leg in the first game of the 2001 season against the Giants. He returned to play for two more seasons and retired after the 2003 campaign.
McCaffrey finished his 13-year career with 565 receptions for 7,422 yards and 55 touchdowns, along with three Super Bowl championships.
In 2019, Northern Colorado named McCaffrey as head coach for their FCS program. After his first season in 2020 was not played because of COVID, he won six of his 22 games and was fired in 2022.
Christian McCaffrey’s Brothers
Max McCaffrey, Christian’s older brother, played in six NFL games with the Jacksonville Jaguars and 49ers in 2017 and 2018.
Christian’s younger brothers, Luke and Dylan, played at the FBS level. Dylan McCaffrey was a quarterback for two seasons at Michigan before playing two seasons for his father at Northern Colorado.
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Luke McCaffrey played quarterback at Nebraska before switching to wide receiver at Rice. He is eligible to be selected in this spring’s draft.
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