3-Time Super Bowl Champion Ed McCaffrey Talks CMC, John Elway & More w/ Rich

Three Super Bowl rings, and the whole run started with a phone call telling Ed McCaffrey the team had enough receivers.

Before the cut came New York, where McCaffrey was drafted by Bill Parcells with the last pick of the third round and held out eight days over maybe 20 grand. When he finally showed up at Fairleigh Dickinson, his makeshift wooden locker sat between Carl Banks and Lawrence Taylor.

Taylor could not find a cleat, his own locker being notoriously a disaster. So he stood up over the skinny rookie receiver from Stanford he had never met and said, "Hey man, did you take my cleat?"

"I'm thinking, I'm going to get my ass kicked on the first day of practice. I just got here," McCaffrey told Rich. Then came a slap on the back and, "Ah man, I'm just messing with you." The relief lasted one drill. On one of the first plays, Taylor head slapped a young tight end, broke his nose and sent him off the field. "So, I'm thinking, he really is crazy." For the record, McCaffrey led with this: Taylor was an incredible teammate and was really nice to him.

Then the Giants cut him. Max was two months old, and McCaffrey had four or five options. He picked the 49ers for one reason, because he thought they could win a Super Bowl.

San Francisco kept four receivers, all four back from the year before, two of them Jerry Rice and John Taylor. Fourteen guys were in camp. McCaffrey had a sprained ankle from a charity basketball game, good cause, stupid decision. And the man across from him every day was Deion Sanders.

"I got to try to beat Deion Sanders on a good day when you're healthy," McCaffrey said. Walking out to practice, he started laughing at how ridiculous it was and decided he did not care anymore. "If I beat Deion on one slant route, my two-month-old son's going to hear about it for the rest of his life." He did. He also claims partial credit for Sanders winning defensive player of the year that season, and cheerfully admits he is the only one making that argument.

Relaxing made him faster, and Mike Shanahan, then the offensive coordinator, barely spoke to him all year but noticed. "The people that matter are watching what you do when no one else is watching." Shanahan took him to Denver, where $136,000 for a season was good money and beside the point.

Super Bowl 32 is the memory McCaffrey says he revisits every day. He was the last man in the victory formation, watching the clock pixels crawl from three to two, terrified a nose tackle would slap the ball loose. Then John Elway took the snap, took a knee and turned around.

"Every human emotion possible is on his face. He's laughing, he's crying," McCaffrey said. "It was like a lifetime of fulfillment all in one facial expression." He wanted to hoist Elway over his head, but he had popped his bursa sac against Pittsburgh and had the knee drained twice that week. "I might drop John Elway after the Super Bowl." So he settled for being the first one to reach him.

Rich pulled up a photo from the Super Bowl 33 confetti, a blond toddler mid-stride who wound up on a Sports Illustrated foldout before anyone knew whose kid he was. "He's got good technique right there. He might need to dorsiflex that left foot a little more," McCaffrey said. That is Christian.

Watching that kid play in a Super Bowl, for the franchise where his father won his first and for the son of the coach he won two others with, is a lot to hold. "It's pretty surreal," McCaffrey said. "But it feels the same. Like when you're a father, you're a father."

Christian is 30 now, an age that comes with a conversation attached, and his father is not interested in it. McCaffrey noted the average NFL career is three years, and that receivers average 2.6 to running backs' 2.3. "There's no metrics at all or data that suggests that the elite running backs are less productive than elite any other position." He pointed to the boatload of backs with 1,000-yard seasons and offensive player of the year awards after 30, and to his own best shape arriving in his 30s.

The chip was never going anywhere either. "Even though he's been the best at what he does for many, many years, he always has a chip on his shoulder," McCaffrey said. Expect no letup: "He will leave no stone unturned in terms of his preparation and he will be ready to go."

Luke, the youngest of the four boys, is going into year three and having a good camp under Coach Quinn, with Jayden Daniels on fire the day McCaffrey visited. As for where the youngest one's edge comes from, that answer is easy. "He's getting the last turkey leg at the dinner table."