​The San Francisco 49ers will once again enter the NFL season with a top-heavy roster backed by a host of unproven players the club hopes will be good enough on the margins to help lift their core of stars to a Super Bowl. For the 49ers to reach those heights, however, they’ll need more than role players to step up. They’ll need their stars to put up big-time performances as well. Let’s exist momentarily in the world where a non-quarterback has a real chance to win the MVP award. In that world the 49ers have a couple of players who jump out as potential candidates to win it. The first is the most obvious since he has multiple top-five MVP finishes in the last three years. Running back Christian McCaffrey finished third in MVP voting in 2023, and was fourth in the voting last year. While he appears to have lost a step, an improved 49ers passing game may open things up enough in the run game to unleash McCaffrey for another huge season where he leads the way for a San Francisco club that steals an NFC West title. That’s more or less the path he took to a third-place finish in 2023. Tack on the potential for a 1,000-yard receiving and 1,000-yard rushing season and McCaffrey is always an interesting MVP candidate. Since we’re in this fantasy space at the moment where a non-quarterback can win an MVP award in the NFL, we’re going to wade into even deeper fantastical waters where a defensive player wins it. That’s where linebacker Fred Warner comes in. Let’s paint this deeply unlikely picture. The 49ers would need to sit atop the NFC and be the best team by a significant margin. In the process of winning the NFC’s No. 1 seed they’d also need their defense to be the best unit in the sport. They’d need that unit to be so suffocating that every opposing quarterback, including the MVP candidates, are rendered useless. In the middle of that defense would need to be Warner and a stuffed stat sheet that includes something north of 5.0 sacks with an equal number of interceptions, some forced fumbles and a couple of touchdowns. And those touchdowns would need to be in high-profile games that seal victories over potential MVP quarterbacks late in the season. And even all of that might not be enough to create enough value in the minds of voters to make a defensive player the MVP for the first time since 1986. The 49ers have a bunch of really good players who could win Offensive or Defensive Player of the Year awards. As for the MVP, that’s likely reserved for an incredible Brock Purdy season. Anyone else winning it is a pipe dream. More 49ers: George Kittle says 49ers have tried everything with Brandon AiyukThis article originally appeared on Niners Wire: Could a 49ers non-QB make a run at an MVP award?