When is a hold in not a hold in, but still kind of a hold in?
49ers running back Christian McCaffrey, who has missed more than a week of practice due to unspecified "tightness," officially isn't refusing to practice in order to get a contract adjustment following the recent market-setting deals signed by Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs. That's what coach Kyle Shanahan said on Tuesday.
For starters, how many times do we have to see the words of a coach become contradicted by subsequent developments before the initial reaction to self-serving statements is suspicion? Shanahan gains nothing for himself or his team by saying, "Yeah, I don't buy that he's too injured to practice. I think he's trying to improve a deal that has no remaining guarantees and that pays out only $12.5 million this year."
Two years ago, Shanahan consistently downplayed a real McCaffrey injury until he was suddenly scratched from a Week 1 Monday night game. People were upset. McCaffrey had been listed as questionable for the game. The sudden news that landed 90 minutes before kickoff sent the fantasy-football crowd scrambling for a replacement after every other game that week had been played.
Last time, the team's best interests pointed to making the injury seem less serious than it was. This time around, the team's best interests are to make the injury seem legitimately too significant to allow him to practice.
It's important to look at the entire picture, and to consider that there's a sliding scale in situations like this. If McCaffrey had financial security beyond 2026, maybe he'd be willing to fight through the tightness. It's not an embellished injury, a la Micah Parsons in 2025, aimed at justifying the push for a contract. It's an injury through which he could, and would, play. But it's an injury that, for now, he's better off not pushing.
Practicing while injured becomes a calculated risk. And a player becomes more willing to take that risk, if his reward has already been secured.
For McCaffrey, his contract is clearly obsolete. As Simms said on Tuesday's PFT Live, there was talk last year that McCaffrey tried unsuccessfully to get an adjustment. After 413 regular-season touches that helped the 49ers power through a long list of injuries in 2025 and a new standard that beats his current pay by $10 million, why wouldn't he want a deal that secures his future with the 49ers?
More importantly, why would McCaffrey assume any risk that "tightness" will become something worse unless and until he has the security he believes he has earned?
Again, even if it's not a classic hold in, it's a business decision. And it's a smart one.
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