Skate
Take
Eat
There’s a rule inside the San Francisco 49ers locker room …
Teak
Stake
Seat
Never get into a competition …
Tea
East
Steak
… with Christian McCaffrey.
That’s especially true when it comes to an anagram game the San Francisco 49ers tailback has taken up recently. Teammates say he’s always trying to goad them into a match — a race to see who can make words from a set number of letters — when they’re on the bus, on the plane or any time there’s a lull in the action.
“It’s annoying because he’s pretty effing good,” fullback Kyle Juszczyk said.
“It’s not even fun,” tight end George Kittle complained.
Said guard Dominick Puni: “He’s one of those guys who’s good at everything.”
Anyone who follows the NFL knows McCaffrey is multitalented. When he was with the Carolina Panthers in 2019, he became the third player in NFL history to tally more than 1,000 yards as both a rusher and receiver. As he prepares to face his former team for the first time on Monday, he’s on pace to become the first to repeat that feat.
He leads the NFL with 1,439 yards from scrimmage, and his 11 touchdowns — including three in Sunday’s rout of the Arizona Cardinals — are more than double the next-highest 49er and tied for second in the league behind the Indianapolis Colts’ Jonathan Taylor (17). He ranks ninth in the NFL in receiving yards; all eight of the guys ahead of him are wide receivers, and no other running back is in the top 35.
See
Deep
Speed
Teammates, however, note his talents go beyond catching footballs and dodging tacklers.
Juszczyk, for example, said he was surprised when, while hanging out with McCaffrey and some of his boyhood friends during a recent offseason, McCaffrey got up and started playing the piano. He took lessons beginning at age 5 and stuck with it after his neighbor and close friend, Mike Mann, told him it was a great way to attract girls.
The running back put that to the test one day when he was wooing now-wife Olivia Culpo. He played a few notes, thinking it would knock her off her feet. But in addition to being a former Miss Universe and model, Culpo is an accomplished cellist whose mother plays viola for the Boston Pops and Boston Symphony Orchestra. And McCaffrey didn’t pass muster, at least as a pianist.
“She was so unimpressed, it was ridiculous,” he recalled.
More impressive are McCaffrey’s skills in word hunts, finding anagrams and playing chess. He recently reached the 1000 level on chess.com, which means that, according to the site’s metric, he’s on the verge of becoming an advanced player … and also that no one on the 49ers bothers to play him anymore.
“I know how to play chess, but I don’t know any strategy,” said the Harvard-educated Juszczyk. “And he has so much fun just mopping the floor with me.”
For that, the 49ers teammates can blame Lisa McCaffrey.
She and her husband, Ed, supplied Christian and his three brothers with their athletic gifts. Ed was a 13-year wide receiver who won a Super Bowl with the 49ers in 1994 and two more with the Denver Broncos. He’s the biggest reason why no running back runs routes as crisply as Christian does. Lisa was a speed-demon soccer forward at Stanford, which is where she met Ed.
Competition was built into McCaffrey brothers’ DNA and, as it turns out, into the family’s home decor. Lisa said she simply likes the look of chessboards and has them throughout their Denver-area home. The surface of the living room coffee table is a chessboard, a side table in the basement doubles as a chessboard and the McCaffreys have a specially made board on which the chess pieces are carved with a Broncos and Raiders theme.
“And the boys would play all the time — everyone fighting to be the Broncos, of course,” she said.
Lisa said her sons certainly weren’t obsessed with chess while growing up, and Christian made clear his newly earned chess rating is good, not great.
“We’re not Bobby Fischers or anything,” he said.
Christian McCaffrey has all the right moves … on the playing field and on the chessboard. (Chris Graythen / Getty Images)
Still, the boys were in chess club in elementary school, and they play more today than they ever did as kids.
“I think as you get older, you realize the similarities between chess and life,” Christian said. “You know, they call it the game of life — from sacrificing things to being two steps ahead to staying in the fight to protecting your queen to sticking with your strategy to whether you want to be offensive or defensive.”
Lisa has another explanation.
“They’re all closet nerds,” she said. “Ed’s a nerd. You think they’re cool because they play football, but deep down inside, they’re all a little bit nerdy. Sorry, they are. But I think that’s a good thing in a way. They’re not out in the club with all the cologne on and the gold chains, that’s for sure.”
The stud athlete/chess nerd dynamic was on full display this offseason. Luke McCaffrey, the youngest brother and a receiver for the Washington Commanders, said that when he trained with Christian, their paraphernalia included cleats, water bottles, towels … and a chess set.
“We were doing full-speed accelerations that had longer rests in between,” Luke said. “You need a little bit of extra time just so your body can do the next one full speed. So that was how we would spend that rest.”
So who’s the family chess champion?
“I think I am,” Luke responded after a pause.
Is Christian going to say otherwise?
“I would put some money on it that he does,” Luke said.
(Christian did just that — firmly.)
Christian said he’ll sometimes play Luke online at night or when they both have an off day. And if he can’t coordinate with his brother, he’ll take on a random opponent who’s at a similar skill level. Other sports stars like soccer player Christian Pulisic and former wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald are active on chess.com, and like them, McCaffrey doesn’t use a pseudonym. Anyone who takes him on can look and see that he or she is playing Christian McCaffrey.
“But I don’t know if they know (who I am),” he said. “It’s people from all over the world. It’s funny. You’re playing like late at night, and you realize you’re playing someone in Greece. And you’re like, ‘What time is it in Greece?’ And you realize it’s midday.”
On top of chess, his locker-room opponents in the anagram game are dwindling, too.
“His first week here, I played him one time and he beat me by like 100 words,” said Kittle, whose locker is next to McCaffrey’s. “I’d never played the game before. And I was like, ‘Yeah, not wasting my time.’”
The only one who can keep pace is Puni, whose girlfriend got him hooked on anagrams and who, unlike Kittle, was prepared when McCaffrey first challenged him.
“We played our first game to 100,” Puni said. “And he won 100 to 97. So it was a dogfight. It felt like a Game 7.”
Puni said when his phone buzzes at 8 p.m., he knows who it is. The text will read either “CMC Word Hunt” or “CMC Anagram.”
At that point, it’s game on.
“It’s kind of annoying,” Puni said of McCaffrey’s word-game prowess.
Tough
Out
“Like, when I beat him in word games, it’s pretty fun,” he added.
Ought
To
Hug.