Christian McCaffrey Sits Out 49ers Practice With ‘Tightness,’ Joining a Camp Injury List That Won’t Quit

Christian McCaffrey missed Monday’s practice with what the 49ers are calling “tightness,” and if that word sounds familiar, it should — San Francisco has been reaching for vague injury descriptors all camp, and the list of players it’s applied to keeps growing.

Offensive coordinator Klay Kubiak downplayed it.

“He’s a little sore, but he’s doing fine. We’re just kinda managing as we go,” Kubiak told reporters

, according to Heavy.com. It was the first practice McCaffrey has missed all camp, per the same report, and the team has restructured its practice schedule this summer specifically to avoid stacking three straight full-pads sessions — an attempt, deliberate or not, to keep exactly this kind of wear-and-tear absence from happening.

McCaffrey’s Tightness Fits a Troubling 49ers Pattern

It didn’t work, at least not Monday. And McCaffrey sitting isn’t an isolated blip — it’s the newest entry on a camp injury list that’s been growing since the first week of August. Nick Bosa has now missed four straight practices with soreness, according to NBC Sports. Mike Evans (quad) and Christian Kirk (calf) have been in and out for over a week. At one point last week, the team reportedly had 20 players sidelined at once.

None of that is being called serious. Soreness isn’t a torn ACL. But the 49ers have spent two straight summers now watching minor-sounding absences turn into real absences, and that history is exactly why “tightness” doesn’t read as a throwaway word to anyone who’s been paying attention.

This Isn’t 2025’s Calf Injury — But the Comparison Is Fair Game

Here’s the stat that actually matters: this time last year, McCaffrey went from a “calf injury” three days before Week 1 to bilateral Achilles tendonitis that cost him the first eight games of the 2025 season. That’s not speculation — it’s what happened, and it’s why any vague lower-body word near his name gets extra scrutiny in Santa Clara now.

To be clear, nothing here suggests McCaffrey’s Monday absence is that kind of injury. He’s 30, he’s coming off a full, healthy 2025 once he got on the field, and the team’s own framing — a scheduled rest day inside a workload-management plan — is more mundane than alarming. But “tightness” in August, for this player, on this team, is a word that’s earned the benefit of the doubt exactly zero times in recent memory.

The 49ers open the preseason Thursday against the Titans and kick off the regular season in Australia against the Rams in one month. A single missed practice in mid-August means very little on its own. What it does is add one more name to a list that, if it doesn’t shrink soon, starts looking less like camp attrition and more like a trend San Francisco can’t afford to repeat into the regular season.