Notre Dame football: McCaffery’s injury gives Irish ray of hope

With Christian McCaffery’s status for Saturday still up in the air, we break down how huge it would be for Notre Dame football if he stays on the bench.

Every college football fan in the country knows Christian McCaffery is right up there with the very best. While his 2016 has been relatively quiet after a breakout 2015, McCaffery remains one of the most explosive, talented and dangerous playmakers in the nation.

And he might not take the field for Stanford when the Cardinal visit Notre Dame this upcoming Saturday. In his team’s loss to Washington State last week, McCaffery suffered an injury of some sort and did not play in the second half of the blowout defeat, though he remained in uniform with his helmet on, per NBC Sports.

What exactly that injury was is unclear. NBC says it might have been related to his hip, Bleacher Report does not specify, College Football Reference says it’s an issue with his leg and Stanford head coach David Shaw merely said his star player was “banged up.”

As of this Tuesday, McCaffery’s status is still unknown, though Shaw said he is improving, according to the Pac-12 Network. And while McCaffery might not be able to match his stellar 2015, his presence, or lack thereof, in Saturday’s game could prove to be the difference in the outcome.

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Stanford has a pretty miserable offense, even when McCaffery does play. The Cardinal rank 122nd out of 128 FCS teams in yards per game and 118th in points. That can be chalked up to a new QB in Ryan Burns, an inexperienced wide receiving corps and an offensive line in flux.

But take away McCaffery, and there is essentially no offense left. He leads the team in carries and receptions. He has 674 yards from the line of scrimmage this year, which is nearly triple the next closest player on the team. The offense has 1,535 total yards on the year, which means he accounts for 44 percent of that total. He has four of the team’s nine offensive touchdowns for roughly the same percentage.

So when people say McCaffery isn’t as good as he was last year, they’re right, but only to a point. Yes, he will probably not produce 2,664 yards from scrimmage as he did in 2015. But he is still absolutely essential to anything Stanford wants to do from an offensive perspective.

After McCaffery, Stanford’s next option at running back would be sophomore Bryce Love, who has attempted five rushes in the past two games for a combined six yards. Other than that, Burns is the only other player on the team with more than 10 attempts on the season, and he is averaging 0.3 yards per rush.

Earlier this week, I wrote about the betting odds on this Saturday’s game and expressed some surprise at the fact that Notre Dame is actually the 2.5-point favorite over Stanford.

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But the more I look at McCaffery’s stats and his dazzling highlight reel, the more I understand how lost the Cardinal would be without him, especially on offense. Simply put, when he is at his best, they can compete with almost any team in the country. But when he is effectively limited, this is a team that might struggle to reach bowl eligibility. So Notre Dame fans have to pray injury knocks him out or at least slows him down Saturday.