Niners RB Christian McCaffrey appreciates MVP attention, but Super Bowl triumph is 'biggest thing on the planet'

HENDERSON, Nev. -- Christian McCaffrey's first Super Bowl experience will also include a moment of suspense roughly 67 hours before the game even kicks off.

He's up for AP NFL Most Valuable Player, the top award in the land, thanks to a 2023 season in which he led the NFL in touches, scrimmage yards, and scrimmage touchdowns, and posted a career-high 1,459 rushing yards. He'll learn whether the voters deemed him worthy Thursday night at NFL Honors.

At this point, there's no telling whether McCaffrey will best Lamar Jackson (or the rest of the field) for MVP, but he's already learned what is most important to him among his choices of hardware: The Lombardi Trophy.

"One thing this week has taught me is, the individual awards and all the individual accolades that you get are great, but there's nothing bigger than the Super Bowl, and that's very true," McCaffrey said Wednesday. "I think I realized that when they announced the All-Pro and the Pro Bowl and all those things.

"I'm extremely grateful for those, and I don't take them lightly, and I don't take them for granted, but to have an opportunity to play in the Super Bowl is the biggest thing on the planet, and I think it's what this whole game is about. So I think that's what's really special."

A strong case for McCaffrey certainly exists. As the numbers suggest, he was undoubtedly San Francisco's most valuable offensive player in 2023, winning the NFL's scrimmage triple crown for the second time in his career and becoming just the second player in NFL history to do so multiple times (the other is legendary Hall of Famer Jim Brown). If one needs further proof of his importance, just look at the 49ers' Week 6 loss to Cleveland, a game in which McCaffrey exited with an oblique