John Lynch can’t wait for Christian McCaffrey and the full-speed 49ers

While almost everybody else took off for a few well-earned days spent far from home base, John Lynch stuck around 49ers HQ during the bye week for a very specific, pleasant, and extremely timely reason.

Christian McCaffrey, who missed the first eight games of the season with calf and Achilles issues, ramped up his individual workouts last week so he could rejoin the 49ers practice on Monday. And the general manager couldn’t resist getting first-hand confirmation of the most important possible development for the second half of the season.

Which is why Lynch had a buoyant answer on my podcast Monday when I asked him if the 49ers expected McCaffrey to be activated from injured reserve and in uniform on Sunday in Tampa Bay.

“I sure hope so,” Lynch said. “Christian’s passed every part of the test in our plan. You know, over bye week he stayed here with our trainers. How do you come to work on the bye week? You come when you’ve got guys like him working out and you want to see it. I sat up in my office and watched from afar. He looks great. He’s responded well.

“I will say that him doing IR work off to the side with our strength coaches and trainers is different than actually getting on the field. There’s that reactive element to it. Now we’ve gotta put him through that test. Responding to a safety coming up and taking one side of leverage away and he’s gotta make a cut. Those type of things. And can he respond in a good way? Can he feel healthy enough? Can he feel like he can go make an impact and handle the volume we’ve put on him? If so, we won’t hesitate to play him.”

Notably, Lynch mentioned McCaffrey’s pending return — along with the eventual returns of Jon Feliciano, Dre Greenlaw, Yetur Gross-Matos and several other important 49ers to bolster this 4-4 team — before, during, and after I asked Lynch about Tuesday’s 1 p.m. trade deadline.

This doesn’t mean that the 49ers are pulling themselves out of the trade market this time around — as Lynch noted, they almost always make a midseason trade or two. But the focus on a lift from McCaffrey, last year’s NFL Offensive Player of the Year, is a crystal-clear indication that Lynch and Kyle Shanahan aren’t headed into the deadline desperate to make a home-run deal.

The 49ers feel good about the roster they have, despite the early shakiness. They feel good about the players they have coming back. They feel good about their positioning, currently a half-game behind first-place Arizona in the NFC West. They feel good about their recent history of second-half stampedes to the postseason. And if the 49ers make a trade on Tuesday, it probably will be mostly supplementary — to add depth to the defensive line, most likely.

“The phones have been active,” Lynch said. “You’re always listening, you’re asking, you’re fielding calls. I think there’s this interesting expectation because we’ve done ’em so much that every year you do it. And that’s not the case. You do it when it makes sense. It seems it’s made sense a lot. And it has helped our team, I will say that.”

Other reasons to make some additions, even if there won’t be an immediate need once a few players start getting healthy: The 49ers probably will suffer several more injuries as the season goes on, which will burn through even more of their depth; and after these see-saw first eight games, the locker room probably would get an emotional boost by watching the front office do everything it can to fuel a playoff push.

“I do believe that our team, our locker room, our leadership believes we’ve got everything we need,” Lynch said. “They think a lot like me. When we start getting the Christian McCaffreys [back in the lineup], he’s a game-changer. Dre Greenlaw, he’s a game-changer. [Talanoa] Hufanga…

“I do watch other sports, though. Like Tommy Edman. That was a really good move [by the Dodgers on their way to winning the World Series], under the radar. And we’ve made really big splash moves like McCaffrey [midseason 2022], Trent Williams in an offseason, not at the deadline. … One of the better moves we’ve made is a guy like Charles Omenihu, who we got some value at the year we traded for him [midseason 2021], but then his deal went on to the next and Charles played some good football. Turned into a comp pick for us.”

The 49ers have already received an immense amount of production from their 2024 draft class, led by guard Dominick Puni and defensive backs Renardo Green and Malik Mustapha, with more likely to come from receivers Ricky Pearsall and Jacob Cowing and running back Isaac Guerendo. But that’s all mostly been just holding things together after losing Javon Hargrave and Brandon Aiyuk to season-ending injuries. The first half was about surviving. Everything is pointed to the second half.

So I asked Lynch: Can you even fairly evaluate this team until it has McCaffrey back at full speed?

“We’re 4-4 and we feel like we left a couple wins out there,” Lynch said, referring to the 49ers’ late-game giveaways to the Rams and Cardinals early this season. “There’s no doubt about that. Does Christian help you finish things? Sure. But whether Christian’s back or not, we’re going to have to learn from the things that we didn’t do, which is just execution. The fundamentals and when you have people down you’ve gotta step on their throat. And that’s with Christian, with Greenlaw, with whoever’s out there, those are things we have to better at in this second half of the season as we move forward. …

“I think there’s so much belief in who we are and what we can do if we start doing the things we expect ourselves to do. It is the fundamental things.”

Here are some other highlights from our conversation:

The 49ers have been a middle-of-the-pack defense in most categories so far this season — 16th in points allowed per game, 10th in yards allowed per game, 12th in yards per play allowed. But Lynch notes that Sorensen, in his rookie season as a defensive coordinator, is by necessity playing a lot of youngsters, especially in the secondary. And the young players have, generally, been getting better and better.

“I think Nick’s doing a really good job,” Lynch said. “I think the results haven’t been probably to our standard. But I like the way things are being taught. I like the way he interacts and [what] he demands of our players. I see the way guys listen and the intent with which they listen. I hear what he’s teaching, our core values. I think it’s really good.

“Having said that, we’ve had a lot of moving parts. And I think the biggest thing is just having some errors in communication. We’ll be in a coverage, half the side’s playing one thing, half the side’s playing [another]. That can’t happen. There’s reasons. We’re playing young guys. Hufanga, for instance, is a great communicator back there. He hasn’t been there. I do like the way things are going with Nick. I see us as a unit that is set up to improve each and every week. I think we’ll be playing really good defense in this second half.”

Lynch said he and the 49ers’ negotiating team really tried to get all the contract talks wrapped up early last offseason, but they just couldn’t avoid the drawn-out and often tempestuous negotiations with Aiyuk, and a less-awkward but still long-lasting negotiation with Trent Williams, which also wasn’t settled until days before Week 1. Lynch partly blamed himself for the delay.

“It wasn’t ideal,” Lynch said. “I was mindful, we were mindful about ‘Let’s start these [negotiations] early so we don’t put ourselves in that situation.’ It didn’t happen. Then I always reflect, well, look these are kind of champagne problems. We’ve got a lot of really good football players. And when you have a lot of good players, there’s tough decisions. There’s things that need to be addressed. We did the best we could given the circumstances.”

Here’s Lynch’s up-close and amused recounting of walking past the now-famous Shanahan discussion with Brock Purdy in the locker room after the 49ers’ dismal loss to the Chiefs last month — with dozens of media members (including me) looking on:

“I walked back and I saw that conversation, which isn’t unusual at all. But I saw this big gang of media which was fairly close. And Kyle was completely oblivious to it. I admire his focus at times. … So I did mention, ‘Hey, you guys want to come over here [to a hallway and away from reporters]?’ Kyle’s like, ‘Why, we’re just talking.’ I said, ‘Well, that whole group is watching you guys have that conversation.’ Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but you just know over time that people are going to react a certain way. I didn’t care, just was offering that to ’em. And by then they were done. I think they just had a good, solid conversation.

“Those two have a tremendous relationship. I’ve talked about Brock’s standard for himself. Kyle’s got a high standard for his quarterbacks, for everybody on the team. And they were just having an honest conversation about the game. I think it’s just, everyone saw this one.”

Everybody knows that Purdy’s contract can’t be extended until next offseason, but when that happens, it’s extremely likely to be an extremely large number — $55 million a year or more with $160 million or more guaranteed.

I asked Lynch if the 49ers’ roster and payroll, which has had the luxury of a Pro Bowl QB making the minimum for the last few years, will have to look different when and if Purdy starts earning a top-of-the-market rate.

“When I was broadcasting, I watched this happen with the Seahawks,” Lynch said.
I think when Russell [Wilson] got paid, they were a team much like us, similar roots to their scheme that ran eight or nine deep [on the defensive line]. I remember sometimes it was a guy like Red Bryant, who was an important run stopper on their team. Well, he wasn’t there the next year. And attrition starts. You can’t pay everybody. That’s the challenge. Sometimes it’s the depth. It’s not the star players, it’s the depth.

“But I’ll tell you what helps there is this year, can’t say enough about our rookie class. When you hit on those guys, that really helps you out. Because you’re kind of filling holes with drafted players. They really help out from the cap perspective, from the cash perspective, all those things.

“That really bodes well for us. We need to do that again moving forward, because they you can endure some of those things.”