Should the San Francisco 49ers be excited or concerned about the 2026 season? That depends on your perspective. On one hand, Deebo Samuel is back, Mike Evans has joined the roster, George Kittle is returning from an Achilles tear, and Christian McCaffrey is coming off another outstanding season. On the other hand, this is also a roster that has grown older while continuing to deal with recurring injuries.

This is exactly why the former NFL defensive end Chris Long sounded skeptical of head coach Kyle Shanahan and Co. making another push to win a Super Bowl. According to Long, instead of slowing down, resting key players, thinking about the future, or making gradual changes, the Niners are pushing even harder for one last championship.

The reason is that they have come close to hoisting a Lombardi a couple of times under Shanahan, and he still believe this roster can win a Super Bowl even though they’re in the same division with the Seattle Seahawks and the Los Angeles Rams. That’s why Long argues that in trying to win, Shanahan and Co. don’t care about their players. He used running back McCaffrey as an example to prove his assessment of this team.

“I wouldn’t say it to Chris McCaffrey, who I got a lot of respect for,” Long said on his Green Light podcast. “…He led the league in touches last year with 413. I call him the coal miner because he’s got the black lung. Like, he’s just in there. They don’t care. They don’t give a f**k about his working conditions. Last year, they were one of the most efficient rushing teams in the NFL, but watching the games, it didn’t feel that way. It felt like he was getting hit a lot. It felt like it was tough to earn yards for them. They didn’t have a lot of explosives.”

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McCaffrey’s workload in the 2025 season can be broken down as a career-high 311 rushing attempts for 1,202 yards and 10 touchdowns and 102 receptions for 924 receiving yards and 7 more touchdowns. The last time he recorded over 400 touches was back in 2019, when he had 403 touches for 2,391 scrimmage yards for the Carolina Panthers.

Since then, the running back has suffered multiple injuries, including a high ankle sprain, AC joint sprain, and thigh strain in 2020, hamstring strain and ankle sprain in 2021, and bilateral Achilles tendinitis/sprain followed by a knee sprain in 2024. His workload, however, remains the same. Still, Christian McCaffrey is performing at the same level. But at the same time, Chris Long is skeptical of the 49ers’ roster because the organization isn’t managing the workload of their star players.

Besides McCaffrey, Kittle went down with an Achilles tendon and hamstring injury in the 2025 season. They’ve surely brought Mike Evans to lead the wide receiver room, but he currently remains sidelined during training camp because of a quad strain. So, according to Long, it isn’t just limited to Christian McCaffrey.

The NFL legend believes that in an attempt to win a Super Bowl after coming close so many times, Kyle Shanahan and Co. are overusing their star players. Their age, at the same time, is another factor. At this point, four of their offensive stars: Kittle, Samuel, Evans, and McCaffrey are in their 30s, while the 49ers remain under the microscope for their recurring injury issues on the roster over the years.