Remembering when Adley Rutschman tackled Christian McCaffrey in a Stanford-Oregon State game

Before he won the hearts of fans in the 2023 Home Run Derby, before he was a standout catcher for the Baltimore Orioles, and before he was the Men’s College World Series Most Outstanding Player for Oregon State in the 2018 MCWS, Adley Rutschman was a freshman kicker for the Beavers’ football team.

Having converted on a 63-yard field goal for his high school team as a senior, Rutschman was used as a kickoff specialist by Oregon State as a freshman.

On one afternoon in November of 2016, Rutschman was teeing it up to kick off in the fourth quarter of a one-score game between Oregon State and Stanford, and waiting to return the kick was a player who had finished second in the Heisman voting in 2015.

Christian McCaffrey.

You might remember what McCaffrey did at Stanford during the 2015 season, which was enough to place him second in Heisman voting behind only Derrick Henry. That year for the Cardinal, McCaffrey gained 2,664 yards from scrimmage, 2,019 of those on the ground and another 645 through the air.

But on that November the following year, as McCaffrey settled under a short kick from Rutschman, he was just another player on the kickoff return team, and one that the freshman kicker needed to tackle.

Which he did:

Rutschman appeared in three games as a freshman in 2016, never attempting a field goal or extra point, but racking up three total tackles.

Including one that came against McCaffrey.

He stepped away from the football field to concentrate on baseball the final season, and as we have seen since his final years at Oregon State until now, that was probably a good decision.

But on one November afternoon in 2016, he was doing something else.

Tackling a future NFL All-Pro on a kickoff.