Tyler Gaffney is an elite athlete with terrible luck.
The former Stanford star of the two sports, chosen by the Pittsburgh Pirates of the MLB and the Carolina Panthers of the NFL, was hired by the 49ers’ training team last week, the latest step on a unique athletic journey.
It includes zero snapshots of the regular NFL season, a minor league baseball season, two Super Bowl rings with the Patriots and three knee surgeries.
It’s a bizarre curriculum. Not surprisingly, Gaffney, 29, could not have imagined sailing this route when he was in Palo Alto.
“Life is a funny thing,” said Gaffney. “And it doesn’t always work the way you draw it.”
It’s funny that Gaffney is back in the NFL.
He quietly retired in 2017, when he was recovering from his third knee surgery, but returned last week after testing with Houston and Washington because he wants to play in a regular season game.
Of course, Gaffney wants to do more than just snap a snap. But that would be a start. And it would be a triumph.
“Unfinished business has been the motto,” said Gaffney. “You don’t even dream of almost getting there.”
On January 1, 2014, Gaffney ended his senior season of 1,709 yards and 21 touchdowns running for 91 yards and a touchdown in the loss of Stanford’s Rose Bowl to the state of Michigan.
Three months later, he was taken in the sixth round of the NFL draft by the Panthers after, at 220 pounds, running the 40-yard run in 4.49 seconds on the combine.
However, Gaffney’s painful path was foreshadowed almost immediately. He tore the lateral meniscus of his right knee in his first training on the training ground with the Panthers. A consolation prize: he was removed from the exemption by the Patriots and won a Super Bowl ring as a reserve for injury.
However, in 2015, at the start of the training camp with the Patriots, he suffered the same injury to his left knee.
In 2016, his only healthy NFL season, he spent time on the training team and active New England squad, but was never active in a game in a season that ended with another Super Bowl ring.
Finally, in 2017, playing for the Jaguars in a pre-season game against the Patriots, he suffered his third contactless lateral meniscus rupture at the end of the season in three years.
“I didn’t know what to do with myself,” said Gaffney. “I was at Disneyland in a wheelchair with my son on my lap and I asked myself, ‘What am I going to do?’ The emotional part got the better of me. “
It helped that Gaffney was the rare NFL player who could try his luck in another professional sport.
In 2018, the outfielder, selected in the 24th round by Pirates in 2012, returned to baseball. He split the season between the Pittsburgh Double-A team in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and his high-class A affiliate in Bradenton, Fla., Hitting 0.244 with six homers and 36 RBIs, despite a six-year layoff.
Gaffney, who is married and has two children, Jaxon, 4, and Conway, 2, was then 27 and is considering factors other than his athletic career.
“I had to think, ‘If I earned a first-rate salary and did the same thing, would I be happy?’” Said Gaffney. “And I thought the answer was, ‘No.’
“There are 140 games in 160 days. You are never at home because even at home you are at the stadium at 11 am … I decided that this was not the best change for my family. So, I finished the year and decided: ‘See you later’ ”.
But Gaffney, a self-styled fitness fanatic, couldn’t get out of sports.
He briefly played for the San Diego Legion, a Major League Rugby team, participated in Spartan, CrossFit races and often trained with current or former NFL players in Southern California.
He served as a wide receiver for a group of quarterbacks that included Kevin Hogan, who played at Stanford and was looking for a job in the NFL.
“They send their films to NFL teams and some coaches who saw their films saw a receiver – it was me – and said, ‘Who’s that?'” Said Gaffney. “To make a long story short, I did some tests this year. And here we are. “
Gaffney is now in Glendale, Arizona, where the 49ers will end their season on Sunday against the Seahawks. However, he doesn’t know if his signing at the end of the season is the start of something or, perhaps, his last stop in professional sport.
If this is the end, the double Stanford specialization (psychology, sociology) will have options. Gaffney has worked with commercial and residential properties and is the co-founder of Avantera Health, which sells supplements and promotes a healthy lifestyle.
Now, however, Gaffney is focused on football, hoping to end a career that includes zero snaps with no regrets.
Eric Branch covers the 49ers for The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @Eric_Branch