Dynasty Fantasy Football: 6 Buy-Low Targets for This Offseason
Matt Breida, RB, San Francisco 49ers
ADP: 156th overall, RB53
Matt Breida had a rookie year similar to Aaron Jones' in that he ran circles around his backfield mates in 2017, and Breida may have a much clearer path to significant volume moving forward.
We'll get to the future outlook of the San Francisco 49ers' backfield in a minute, but let's start with Breida's advanced metrics from last year. He carried the ball 105 times with a Rushing NEP per carry of 0.03 and a Success Rate of 41.90%. Carlos Hyde, on the other hand, logged 240 attempts at -0.09 Rushing NEP per carry and a 35.83% Success Rate. Hyde had 135 more carries, so it was a lot harder for him to maintain superb per-touch efficiency, but the gap there is pretty wide.
In addition to that, Hyde is headed to free agency this offseason, and while it's hard to put too much stock in early rumors, 49ers beat writer Matt Burrows thinks there's a good chance San Fran lets Hyde walk. If that happens, Breida would have a great chance to enter 2018 as the Niners' top back unless the team went out and landed a high-profile runner in free agency or the draft.
That should be a valuable role for fantasy as Jimmy Garoppolo played like one of the game's best quarterbacks after he took the starting job in Week 12. From that point on, Garoppolo led the league in yards per attempt (8.76) and pretty much completely turned around the 49ers franchise. The Niners just locked up Jimmy G with a five-year, $137.5 million deal, so he'll be around for a while.
If Hyde does indeed move on from the Niners and the team doesn't bring in another high-end back, Breida's value will skyrocket, so the window to get him for cheap may be closing.
