For all of the talk about the 49ers’ and their proverbial “window,” Christian McCaffrey has a good grasp on the window of life.
The star running back imparted some words of wisdom upon quarterback Brock Purdy as San Francisco enters a pivotal 2025 NFL season, with the team’s ever-elusive sixth Super Bowl title at the top of their to-do list.
“McCaffrey was talking a couple of months ago before we went to our summer break, and he was like, ‘Dude, we all only have a window of time in our career, whether that’s four, five, six, eight, 10 years of your career,’ ” Purdy shared recently with Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer. ” ‘Don’t finish your 10-year career and have all these regrets, man. Let’s go all out for this window we have in our life to play football for the Niners and go win a championship.’ “
As Purdy looks to live up to the five-year, $265 million contract extension he signed in the spring, McCaffrey is hoping to bounce back from an injury-riddled 2024 season.
The 49ers as a whole are fresh off a down year where they missed the NFL playoffs, and an offseason which featured departures by many key players via trade or free agency. But their solid core of players like Purdy, McCaffrey, George Kittle, Fred Warner and Nick Bosa remains intact — and it’s clear the RB-QB tandem believe San Francisco has what it takes to make another run at the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
“I feel like there’s this … ‘Oh, they’re in a rebuild,’ ” Purdy told Breer. “And so for me, what excites me is I want to go show everybody we have what it takes to win right now. It doesn’t matter, we’re going to go build and come together [over time], and then go put a season together, man, and make a run. And I think we have the team to go win it all. And I’ll say it, but that’s what excites me.”
The 49ers Faithful certainly hope Purdy is right.
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