Of all of the players in college football with something to prove this spring, Stanford’s dynamic Christian McCaffrey is most certainly not among them. The Heisman finalist did it all for the Cardinal en route to a Pac-12 championship last season, which is why David Shaw decided to give McCaffrey a little bit of a break in the spring game on Saturday.
“He went through all the practices,” Shaw said. “For me, it was just a mileage thing. We tried to make sure that we got him completely recuperated before we starting beating him up again.”
McCaffrey put up monster numbers last season in rushing for 2,019 yards on 337 rushing attempts, catching 45 passes for 645 yards, returning 15 punts and 37 kickoffs. He ended his tremendous sophomore season with 2,664 yards from scrimmage and 1,200 special teams yards. McCaffrey did see the field during Stanford’s spring game, calling for a fair catch three teams on punt duty, but that was all fans got to see of the 2015 Heisman Trophy runner-up.
“I wish I could be out here, but it makes sense,” McCaffrey said. “I feel great, and excited to be a part of this team.”
With McCaffrey taking it relatively easy in the spring game, the focus was on the quarterback competition with Ryan Burns and Keller Chryst attempting to replace Kevin Hogan. Shaw said he will have to look at the film before making any determination in which quarterback performed better, but the box score showed a pretty even afternoon for each. Burns completed 17 of 23 pass attempts for 153 yards and two touchdowns. Chryst completed 16 of his 25 attempts for 156 yards and he led two scoring drives.
“Hard to say who had the upper hand,” Shaw said. “We have to see what the decision making looked like. I was excited to see both guys come back and make some big-time throws. There were a lot of positives for both guys.”