“Injury-prone,” “fragile,” “washed,” and “overused” are adjectives carelessly thrown around by NFL fans when describing Christian McCaffrey over the past two years. It started when Carolina handed him the back after the 2019 season, where he racked up a historic 1000 rushing yards and 1000 receiving yards. The Panthers, who were eager to make him the face of the franchise as they were parting ways with Cam Newton, paid the running back 64 million dollars. Money ball armchair GMs criticized building a team philosophically and financially around a running back, citing the easily replaceable production readily available and for a much cheaper price. Their criticisms only warranted merit as CMC missed substantial time due to injury the next two seasons.

Christian McCaffrey is ready to fight back against the critics this year, and it started with literal fights in joint practices between the Carolina Panthers and the New England Patriots this week. Two days of practice produced multiple scrums, and CMC was in the middle of most of them.

Whether CMC is injury prone or not will be determined this year. He was exceptionally durable his first three seasons, but over the last two, has battled a series of minor, albeit lingering, injuries. I've long argued that injury prone narrative has been overblown, and had Carolina been in more competitive circumstances, he would have played.

Everyone on this team is fighting for their future. Carolina will need CMC if they want to win those fights!

By Tony Dunn

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