After a great night, Jordan Mason reveals the true status of Christian McCaffrey

When running back Christian McCaffrey was surprisingly left off the roster for Monday night's game against the Jets, my initial thought was that this probably wasn't a surprise to the 49ers.

After the 32-19 win over the Jets, McCaffrey's replacement confirmed this.

Jordan Mason, who went undrafted in 2022 and now has 28 carries for 147 yards and a touchdown, let the cat out of the bag in a postgame interview with ESPN's Lisa Salters.

She asked Mason when he knew he would start.

“Maybe Friday, Friday night,” Mason said. “Something like that.”

But the 49ers just labeled McCaffrey “questionable” on Saturday. If Mason knew he was going to start Friday, the 49ers knew it too. And they used the injury reporting system to hide the truth for as long as possible.

This is not an attack on Mason. He told the truth. In doing so, he exposed the fundamental flaw in a set of rules that allows a team to label a player as “questionable” even when there is no real internal doubt about his status.

On the one hand, this is made possible by the general process of disclosing injuries and player status. On the other hand, it underlines the existence – and value – of insider information.

The 49ers (as Mason's testimony proves) knew the truth. Presumably no one else did. In a world without legalized gambling and fantasy football, the rule is that all is fair. But with money now changing hands based on decisions made on information provided by the team, that's a problem.

Should McCaffrey have been considered questionable? At the very least, definitely. There are also arguments that he should be ruled out.

If the 49ers had played in New York tonight, he might even have been downgraded to “out” because his calf/Achilles injury might not have made the cross-country flight.

As far as we know, the 49ers have known for several days that McCaffrey would not be able to play. The biggest clue came in the initial injury report last week, when his calf injury was suddenly classified as an Achilles injury as well.

And while the 49ers may have violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the rules, the rules are so loose and incomplete that they allow teams subtle liberties.

The 49ers simply wanted to win. Keeping the Jets in the dark for as long as possible was strategically advantageous for them. But it also affected the bets (especially special bets) placed before the game.

By keeping the information secret until it was time to announce the inactive players, it worked. No one knew McCaffrey wasn't playing.

Except Mason. And probably the coaching staff.

That said, the 49ers will surely go into cleanup mode in Aisle 5, claiming Mason slipped up or whatever. Regardless, it's clear that tonight's development wasn't nearly as surprising to the 49ers as it was to the rest of the world.

If the NFL continues to line its pockets with gambling money (which includes allowing team owners to own up to five percent of the companies that offer sports betting), then the NFL has an obligation to find a more transparent and accurate way to level the playing field for people who are legally betting money based on incomplete information.

This is especially true when those who know the truth are able to use it to their advantage, if only by sharing the information with people who can put their money where their inside information lies.