Christian McCaffrey gives two-word message to 49ers’ youngsters after first loss originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
The 2025 49ers have a clear mix of veteran stars and inexperienced youngsters being relied on to keep their Super Bowl window open.
And despite suffering its first loss of the NFL season on Sunday to the Jacksonville Jaguars, San Francisco doesn’t have too much reason to panic, provided that its up-and-comers remain in the right headspace.
Luckily, team leaders like Christian McCaffrey have seen it all, and they know how to respond to these losses. After Sunday’s game, the 49ers running back shared his simple message of motivation to his younger teammates.
“Just stay hungry,” McCaffrey told reporters. “Once again, you can’t hang your head. You got to just learn from the tape — whether you’re young or old — you learn from the tape and keep moving and get better and come out ready to roll on Thursday.”
Now, with a short week ahead for San Francisco’s divisional matchup against the Los Angeles Rams on Thursday, McCaffrey knows the 49ers must forget about Sunday’s loss particularly quickly.
“I think just move on,” McCaffrey said about the offense’s mindset. “I think we lost today. We didn’t play good enough. We made a bunch of mistakes and still had a chance to win.
“With an early game coming up, you just correct the mistakes. A lot of the mistakes are super uncharacteristic. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror and just move on because it’s a quick turnaround. It was a bad game all around. We’re excited to move on from it.”
In Sunday’s loss, San Francisco turned the ball over four times; the Jaguars turned the first three takeaways into 17 points and used the final one to run out the clock in the fourth quarter.
If the 49ers are going to have a chance to knock off their NFC West rival on Thursday night, they must take care of the ball better and eliminate those uncharacteristic mistakes, as McCaffrey mentioned.
