Christian McCaffrey shuffles into no-man’s land a lot. Here’s why.

At some point Sunday evening, you will find yourself watching the newly-crowned Offensive Player of the Year, Christian McCaffrey, doing something odd in the Super Bowl.

McCaffrey will start in the backfield, then shuffle sideways. Sometimes it will look relatively normal. Other times, he’ll stop, ending up alone, in bizarre locations six or seven yards behind of scrimmage, like a satellite fallen out of orbit.

It’s a motion that has left some folks scratching their heads.

J.T. O’Sullivan, the former 49ers quarterback and creator of The QB School — an excellent outlet for quarterbacking and schematic breakdowns — is decidedly not a fan.

He has frequently criticized the motion for forcing McCaffrey to have to run those six or seven yards just to get to the line of scrimmage and begin his route, and for how that can mess up spacing of receivers on certain plays.

There are also other, even funkier variations of the motion, like when McCaffrey started in the left slot (tight to the left of the offensive line) against the Lions, then scuttled backwards for a few yards.

But for the most part, he’s shuffling horizontally. Sometimes it looks incredibly silly, and other times, it looks innovative.

So what is it? What’s the point?

The 49ers, I confirmed this week, call the motion “bump.” Per Keegan Abdoo of NextGenStats , McCaffrey has run it 41 times this season. While the 49ers have run it with other players, no one else in the league has hit double digits.

The genesis of it is the 49ers' painstaking self-assessment in the offseason. They take a “scheme evaluation notebook” that contains data of every play a Kyle Shanahan offense has ever run, dating back to Washington, and grade each play from the past season. They discuss how those plays worked, how they didn't, and where there's room for innovation.

In that process, they found new opportunities to maximize McCaffrey, who was acquired before the trade deadline last season.

Tight ends coach Brian Fleury told me this week that McCaffrey being in the system for a full year fundamentally altered what’s possible for San Francisco.

“I think when we traded for Christian last year, it was in the middle of the season, and we were able to adapt to having him on the roster, but then having a full offseason to prepare for him being in the offense, I think you just see a lot of unique ways to create distribution issues for the defense and then unfavorable matchups,” Fleury said. “Really the most obvious example of that to the naked eye is just gonna be the unique motions that we use and how we move Christian just slightly out of the backfield.”

In general, motions help identity coverage. They are not guaranteed to, but they frequently tell a team whether a defense is in zone (covering an area of the field) or man (covering a player).

What "bump" motion does is challenge a defense’s rules. If McCaffrey is lined up in the backfield, he has to be accounted for as a running back. But then he shuffles sideways. Is he still viewed by the defense as a running back, or is he considered a receiver in an "empty" formation at that point?

That’s the joy for the 49ers. It’s also difficult for other teams to try to replicate that motion to prepare for it, especially given that it's nearly impossible to find someone who can properly imitate McCaffrey.

“Is it empty, or is it not? Well, they have to figure that out in a split-second,” Fleury said. “Then just some of the different depths and alignments that we use him in when he is split out, just doing things that they don't typically see in a practice. It's difficult for them to replicate with their scout team.”

While defenses could adjust to having seen McCaffrey’s distinct motion, Shanahan said earlier this year that those adjustments could open other avenues, when asked how "bump" affects defenses.

“Just watching how it moves the defense,” Shanahan said. “Getting people out of positions. Watching people's adjustments. How they're going to treat it. I mean, when people haven't seen it before, then it's cool, but then they see you do it, so they adjust to it and you see what that does to people. Does it help something and open up another? But, it's just about getting people to move.”

Let’s refer back to the last Super Bowl between the 49ers and Chiefs as a case study, compared to this season. In Week 11, McCaffrey scored the opening touchdown against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after a “bump” motion to the left.

Shanahan said he thought it was the same play San Francisco ran against the Chiefs in the 2020 Super Bowl, but the first time the play was run with a “bump" variation.

The two plays look totally different, but come from similar formations, with one receiver to the left, three to the right, and one to the left of the quarterback in the backfield.

The route concepts are different, but there’s a clear distinction between McCaffrey’s ability as a receiver compared to Coleman’s, and the gravitational effect the “bump” motion has in drawing defenders in the wrong direction.

In the Super Bowl LIV, it came on a 3rd-and-5 with 10:28 left in the third quarter to Tevin Coleman. Coleman was aligned in the backfield to Jimmy Garoppolo’s right, with Kendrick Bourne to Garoppolo’s left. Deebo Samuel was aligned left, with George Kittle and Emmanuel Sanders split to the right.

Coleman motioned out of the backfield to align right of both Kittle and Sanders, setting up three receivers to the right, one far left, and one in the backfield to Garoppolo's left.

The result was that Garoppolo ignored an open Kittle running a short slant over the middle, instead opting to hit Coleman on a shallow crosser. Sanders tried to create a pick (a route that attempts to clear out a defender who is covering someone else) for Coleman, but failed. It was a 3-yard reception which set up a 42-yard field goal.

Against Tampa Bay, it was a second-and-goal from the 4-yard line in the middle of the first quarter. The 49ers motioned Kyle Juszczyk wide to the right, then back into a trips bunch (three receivers all aligned next to the offensive line) on the right side of the formation, identifying that it was man coverage. Brandon Aiyuk was alone on the left side.

You could see McCaffrey’s eyes track Juszczyk from the start of the play, because the 49ers could check to another play if they didn’t get an indicator that it was man coverage.

Then, Purdy got into his cadence, and McCaffrey shuffled to his left.

When the ball was snapped, McCaffrey cut diagonally to his right, sprinting through the A gap between center Jake Brendel and right guard Spencer Burford.

Buccaneers linebacker Devin White had to try and track McCaffrey against shallow crossers (both functioning as picks) from Juszczyk and Kittle. He stood no chance, and McCaffrey caught a walk-in touchdown.

The gravity created by McCaffrey, and the malleability of that motion are on full display in that example.

Both of those plays came out of shotgun, which the 49ers have exceedingly preferred to operate in.

That's another benefit of "bump." It lets the 49ers stay in shotgun.

Their use of play-action under center has declined from 23.9 percent in 2019 to 11.6 percent in 2023, even though they are the most effective team in the league on play-action under center.

The issue is that those play-actions – the ones you so often saw from Jared Goff on the Rams and Jimmy Garoppolo on the 49ers – leave a quarterback momentarily blind, making it difficult to identify coverage, and sacrifice receivers.

McCaffrey’s motion does not replace that under center play-action, but it gives the 49ers an adjacent way to deceive defenses, while allowing them to use all their receivers.

“Play-action accomplishes certain things against the defense when they're aggressively fitting runs, but then you're limited in how many people can get out into the route when you're doing play-action stuff, because in order to sell the run fake, the back is involved, the tight end's involved usually,” Fleury told me. “So that's part of the reason for that, is just, we feel comfortable in our drop-back protection game with the offensive line and just being able to get some of the guys out into routes faster.”

Again, this began because the 49ers recognized that they could do more with McCaffrey than they’ve ever done with their running backs.

Juszczyk, the team’s Swiss Army knife fullback, said the motion, and McCaffrey, create brutal matchups for defenses.

“It puts Christian in space, typically with a defender that doesn't want to be in space,” Juszczyk said this week. “And I think that's a strength of his, because he really can move like an All-Pro wide receiver. So that kind of forces, typically linebackers, or a box safety, to have to be in space with Christian, which usually is not to their advantage.”

Despite the odd depths, the motion allows McCaffrey – who frequently runs choice routes (in which he decides which route to run based on coverage) – to see the field like a quarterback. Ask anyone about his football IQ and attention to detail. He knows the foundation of the concepts the 49ers run, and what they seek to attack on every play.

So, by giving him a longer run up, McCaffrey has an extra bit of time to see how coverages unfold, and take advantage accordingly. It also gets him a running start, while defenders are generally flat-footed.

Lastly, it's a move of preservation. While it adds more steps to his commute, it keeps McCaffrey away from some unnecessary contact.

As someone who takes his fair share of hits, that's welcomed.

“Well, for one, it gives you a small indicator on coverage,” McCaffrey told me earlier this year. “So if somebody comes out, it could be man, no one comes out, it could be zone. I think it helps the quarterback out a lot."

“Two, because I run a lot of routes out of the backfield, a lot of guys will try to chip me. D-ends will try to chip me, and so being able to just get outside and get some width before I have to run my route, so I don't have to avoid the D-end, and then get covered by a backer. Creating a little bit more space and then just kind of spreading the field out a little bit.”

And if you’re wondering if all that extra running wears on him, McCaffrey – who has been described as having the attitude of a walk-on athlete with his preparation – says it doesn’t.

“I hope not," he chuckled. "I hope a little 20-yard jog or a shuffle isn't gonna make me tired.”