SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Here’s the quickie scouting report on McCaffrey: Extremely fast, elite lateral quickness, prolific scorer. Can get feisty. God help you if you yank her ponytail. Once ran a 4.8-second 40 while pregnant.

We should clarify: That’s the report on Lisa McCaffrey, Lisa Sime when she was knocking in goals for Stanford’s soccer team in the late 1980s.

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“She had pace and fast feet — and she was strong. You often get one thing and not the other,” said Julie Foudy, the former captain of the U.S. women’s national soccer team and a teammate of Lisa’s at Stanford. “And Lisa just flew. I mean, she was really fast.”

It’s easy to connect 49ers star running back Christian McCaffrey with his father, Ed, a 13-year NFL wide receiver who won a Super Bowl with San Francisco in 1994 and two more with Denver. And there are plenty of traits — including fearlessness and profound powers of concentration — he gets from dad.

But when it comes to physical gifts, well, he takes after his mom.

Three of the four McCaffrey boys resemble Ed: tall, long-limbed, brown-haired. Max, the eldest, was a receiver at Duke and had a couple of stints with the 49ers. The third son, Dylan, is a quarterback at Northern Colorado — where Ed coached from 2020 to 2022 — and the fourth, Luke, plays wide receiver at Rice.

“The brothers were at our last game,” said general manager John Lynch, a teammate of Ed’s at Stanford. “And Dylan looks exactly like Eddie — it’s very apparent.”

Then there’s Christian, who’s blond, blue-eyed and who, at 5-foot-11 and 208 pounds, is decidedly stockier than his siblings.

“He didn’t look like the other brothers, that’s for sure,” Lisa said in a phone interview. “We joked about it all the time. It was, ‘Oh, did the mailman come by? That’s weird.’”

Two things always have stood out about Lisa. The first is that she has jokes — tons of jokes.

At his post-draft news conference with the Panthers, Christian was on the podium and was asked how he reconciled leaving Stanford a year early. “Dropout,” someone in the audience muttered before Christian could answer. It was Lisa.

When discussing her eye color in comparison to Christian’s, she says they’re “kind of, I guess, hazel. If I’m wearing green, they’re like throw-up green. If it’s brown, they’re kind of sh– brown.”

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Foudy recalled that Stanford’s soccer team was in the middle of a game in 1989 when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck.

“We were literally on the field and the field started rolling — like waves. You could see it,” she said. “And Lisa was screaming, ‘Do not let me fall through a crack! Do not let me fall through a crack!’ She thought the earth was going to open up. So in the middle of this earthquake, we’re all kind of laughing at Lisa, but we’re also wondering, ‘What in the hell is happening?'”

And while the comedy never stops with Lisa, her speed is serious.

Lisa’s father, Dave Sime, was a world-class sprinter who took silver in the 100-meter dash in the 1960 Olympics in a photo finish with Germany’s Armin Hary. He would have won gold in the 4×100 relay, but his team was disqualified for a foul.

Lisa ran track, played tennis and scored so many goals at her Miami high school — 56 — that she caught the attention of Stanford’s soccer coach 2,500 miles away. In Palo Alto, Lisa played forward while Foudy delivered passes from the midfield.

“I would just try to release her, spring her,” Foudy said. “Give her the ball and go.”

And what about that impressive 40-yard dash time? When the Colorado Valkyries, a team with the Women’s Professional Football League, was launching in 2000, a reporter convinced her to try out as part of a television news story, Lisa said. She did and finished with one of the fastest times that day, 4.8 seconds.

“I remember being nauseous afterward, like I had to get food as soon as I finished,” she said. “And I remember thinking, something may be going on here because I’m never nauseous like this. And then I realized: Yup, I was knocked up for the fourth time.”

Luke would arrive roughly nine months later.

A decade earlier, Ed ran a faster 40 time — but only barely. He clocked 4.69 seconds at the 1991 NFL Scouting Combine, then spent the next few years working diligently to dispel the notion that he was too slow for his position.

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Lynch remembers McCaffrey being a big, physical 240-pounder when Lynch arrived at Stanford in 1989. Two years later, McCaffrey had trimmed nearly 30 pounds from his frame. When he couldn’t shed any more weight, he started picking apart his uniform, removing the lining and pockets from his pants and discarding every type of padding save the smallest shoulder pads he could get his hands on.

The reduced drag never turned him into a burner. But Ed had enough speed to go along with savvy route running, toughness and terrific concentration to surpass 1,000 receiving yards in three seasons with the Broncos and to reach the Pro Bowl in 1998.

“My dad was a technician when it comes to route running,” Christian said this week. “Ever since I can remember I’ve heard a lot of details when it comes to route running — how many steps you’re taking and when you’re taking them and the correct steps and the correct timing. That’s kind of been flooded in my brain since I can remember.”

All of which goes a long way in explaining why the McCaffreys’ second son has been such an ideal fit for the 49ers. Kyle Shanahan’s offense hinges on being able to run and pass equally well while using the same personnel group and Christian — the product of an ultra-precise route runner and an explosive soccer forward — is the best of his generation at doing both.

“He doesn’t just run the football,” said quarterback Brock Purdy, who was a backup quarterback when McCaffrey arrived in October and helped the running back learn the playbook. “He can do stuff out of the backfield, he can line up out as a receiver and make plays that way. Literally, there is so much. He’s like a Swiss Army knife.”

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It’s no coincidence that the 49ers have won every game since McCaffrey took over as their starting tailback in Week 8. He’s led them in either rushing or receiving six times and has been the team’s leader in both categories in three games. Before he arrived, the 49ers averaged 20 points a game. With McCaffrey, they’ve averaged 30.

Here’s one more superlative: The 49ers’ fearsome defense has allowed just one running back to surpass 100 combined yards this season. That back? McCaffrey, who had 54 rushing yards and 50 receiving yards with the Panthers in Week 5.

McCaffrey’s never-satisfied mentality also makes him a good fit with Shanahan, a coach whose invariable postgame theme is: Yeah, you won, but you also left a lot of yards and points on the field.

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After McCaffrey finished with 146 combined yards against the Dolphins in Week 13, run game coordinator Chris Foerster found the tailback sitting next to fullback Kyle Juszczyk in the locker room. Foerster stopped to congratulate the backfield mates on their performances, “and the first thing Christian does is stand up, look me in the eyes — serious as a heart attack — and goes, ‘I missed too much today. I promise I’ll get better. I missed some holes and I left too much out there. I won’t let you guys down again. Just give me time. Be patient with me.’

“And I’m like, ‘Christian — relax, man. We’re winning. We won the game.’”

After a win over the Rams in which he threw, caught and ran for a touchdown, McCaffrey stood in front of the media and lamented that he “left a lot of meat on the bone today.” It wasn’t for show. Right tackle Mike McGlinchey said he’s sat next to McCaffrey in post-game team meetings — all of them following wins, mind you — and seen the running back become upset over what he was watching on film.

“He’ll say, ‘No, I’ve gotta get more there. I’ve got to do better. That’s not OK,’” McGlinchey said.

Does he even do that after blowouts?

“All the time,” McGlinchey said. “You’re not a Super Bowl-contending team without that.”

There’s an element of destiny in McCaffrey’s arrival with the 49ers.

When he was born, Ed was beginning his second offseason with a Broncos team coached by Mike Shanahan. Kyle was a 15-year-old handling the communications wires for his dad on the sideline on game days and soaking in as much NFL knowledge as a high schooler could the rest of the year. The oft-written story that Kyle once babysat Christian is apocryphal. Lisa said it was Kyle’s sister, Krystal — the more responsible sibling — who handled the babysitting duties.

“Because we wanted our kids to live,” Lisa said.

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But it’s absolutely true that Kyle, who aspired to be an NFL receiver, idolized Ed more than any other player. It’s why he wore Ed’s No. 87 at Duke and the University of Texas.

And it’s not just Kyle who has a long history with the McCaffreys. Lynch, in fact, was on hand for the first hint that they might even become a family. He said there were plenty of times that he and the other football players cheered on the women’s soccer team, and he also recalled a fraternity party that Ed and Lisa attended as a couple. “I just remember it was one of their first dates,” Lynch said.

The party may have featured Lisa and some of her teammates getting up on a table — or maybe it was a bar top — and taking over the room. Asked about that date, Lisa didn’t miss a beat.

“John must be mistaken,” she quipped. “Because I was at the library. I didn’t ever go to a frat party in college.”

She’s still pretty fast on her feet.

(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; Photos: Michael Zagaris, Rick Doyle, John Leyba / Getty Images)

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