Jets’ Breece Hall looks to rise to Christian McCaffrey-like level

Even if the Jets weren’t opening their season in San Francisco on Monday night, the comparison would be natural.

Christian McCaffrey is the bar for running backs in the NFL.

Breece Hall, just two seasons into his career, has developed a profile that looks a lot like the younger version of the 49ers superstar.

That the two will be on opposing sidelines Monday, well, that just makes it too easy.

“Really to me, I haven’t really done anything in this league yet,” Hall said Tuesday. “The hype and all that stuff’s there, but for me, it’s just having a standard for myself. Every time I step out on the field, I want to be the best player out there. I want every team to know who No. 20 is.”

He won’t get many better opportunities than Week 1 in prime time against last year’s NFC champs and the player who led the league in rushing yards.

Hall said he’s watched McCaffrey since middle school.

A Great Plains kid — born in Omaha, high school in Wichita, college at Iowa State — Hall said that despite family ties to the Niners, he never had a favorite NFL team growing up, and recalled McCaffrey’s starring Rose Bowl performance against Iowa as Stanford rolled over the Hawkeyes.

In an effort to help get Quincy Williams ready for the matchup, Hall also has worked with the linebacker after practices, doing his best impression of McCaffrey.

“The first part, it’s more like releases,” Williams said. “So really just getting off the line — ‘What do you see when you get this move right here? What do you see when you get this one right here?’ So I’m already anticipating with my leverage, just off the release, goes into the second phase for us with the trail position. [49ers QB Brock] Purdy does this thing where it doesn’t matter where he is on the field, if he rolls out and stuff like that, he’s looking for the big play all the time.”

“[McCaffrey] has no wasted movement and when he’s running the ball or he’s running his routes, reading between zone and man, he always makes the right read, it seems like,” Hall said. “He pretty much does everything right, so just seeing how he plays with minimal mistakes and great attention to detail.”

Notably, McCaffrey’s best season — the only one in which he reached 1,000 yards both rushing and receiving — came in his third year in the league, the point Hall is entering.

As a 22-year-old in his second year, McCaffrey ran for 1,098 yards with 867 in the air.

Hall, at the same juncture, ran for 994 with 591 in the air — well behind, but with the caveats that the Jets offense should be much better this season with a healthy Aaron Rodgers and that Hall was coming off an ACL tear.

So what can this season look like?

Any fantasy football player would contest the notion that Hall is in need of a breakout — the point at which you could draft him outside the first round is long gone — but if the Jets are going to reach the playoffs for the first time in over a decade, he’ll be mirroring McCaffrey in more ways than extra work after practice.

“Obviously the team, we have big expectations for ourselves,” Hall said. “I always have a big expectation for myself. For me personally, I want to be out there and be healthy again and I know if I can be healthy and play, be a three-down back then everything I want, I’m gonna be able to do this season. We’re worried about the team goals first and any individual stuff will come with that.”