Sunday night's game between the Falcons and 49ers will feature two of the league's most dynamic running backs in Atlanta's Bijan Robinson and San Francisco's Christian McCaffrey. Both players are known as dual-threat backs who shed tackles and serve as the focal point of their respective offenses.
Despite playing only five games, Robinson leads the NFL in scrimmage yards with 822 entering Week 7. McCaffrey ranks second with 780 scrimmage yards in six games. Robinson has been the more productive runner with 484 rushing yards (3rd) to McCaffrey's 336 yards (20th). However, the nine-year veteran leads all running backs with 444 receiving yards while Robinson is second with 338 yards. The two not only share similar production but also an affinity for each other's game. Robinson spent time training with McCaffrey in California during the offseason leading into his third year.
"Seeing how he creates leverage on a route and on choice routes, it's been amazing to learn from that," Robinson told Bleacher Report at training camp in August. "On the field, it's been showing, trying to be unguardable at all aspects."
Unguardable is a good way to describe Robinson's start to the 2025 season, and he launched himself into the national spotlight with a career-best performance on Monday Night Football against Buffalo. The NFC Player of the Month for September totaled 238 yards from scrimmage, including 170 yards on 19 carries and 68 yards on six receptions. He also broke free for a career-long 81-yard touchdown run and earned NFC Offensive Player of the Week honors.
A significant part of what makes both Robinson and McCaffrey so impactful is their ability to force missed tackles. Since entering the league in 2023, Robinson leads the NFL with 187 missed tackles forced on run plays. According to Next Gen Stats, he has forced a missed tackle on 31.2% of runs throughout his career. McCaffrey played in 13 fewer games during that span but nevertheless managed to rank 10th with 131 missed tackles forced.
McCaffrey has forced 40 missed tackles this season while Robinson has forced 32, which rank second and fourth among running backs, respectively. Robinson leads the league in yards after forcing a missed tackle, and his 295 yards after missed tackles are the most by a player through six weeks of a season since Dalvin Cook (350) and McCaffrey (348) in 2019, according to Next Gen Stats. A quick reminder that Robinson has only played five games in the first six weeks compared to the six games played in 2019 by both Cook and McCaffrey.
Perhaps the most exciting parallel for the two players is that through his first five games, Robinson's 2025 is shaping up similarly to McCaffrey's 2019, in which the latter was a first-team All Pro, Pro Bowler and finished third in Offensive Player of the Year voting.
That season, McCaffrey totaled 2,392 scrimmage yards and 19 total touchdowns on 403 touches. His 866 scrimmage yards in the first five games were the highest total by any player through the first five games of a season this century. Robinson's 822 scrimmage yards ranks second over that span.
Since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger, only McCaffrey and O.J. Simpson (1973 and 1975) have totaled more yards from scrimmage than Robinson through five games. Of the seven players over that time span to accumulate 800 scrimmage yards in their team's first five games of a season, Robinson accomplished the feat on the fewest touches (107) and his 7.7 yards per touch is the highest of any player with at least 100 touches over that span.
Robinson will have another chance to show out for a wide audience as the Falcons play their third nationally televised game of the year on "Sunday Night Football" against the 49ers this week. If Robinson reaches 178 scrimmage yards on Sunday night he would join Marshall Faulk as the only players to eclipse 1,000 scrimmage yards through the first six games of a season since 2000. That might sound like a tall order, but Robinson is averaging 164.4 scrimmage yards per game in 2025.
