ADP: 157th overall (RB51)
Matt Breida looked like a great buy-low candidate heading into this offseason, but then the San Francisco 49ers went out and made Jerick McKinnon the fourth-highest paid back in the league (by average annual value).
So there goes Breida's appeal, right?
Not quite.
There are a couple reasons to still be aboard the Breida train.
For one, he was really, really good last year. Among backs with at least 100 carries, he finished third in Rushing NEP per attempt and eighth in Success Rate. Now, he never saw more than 12 carries in a game, and he had double-digit rushes only five times, so we shouldn't get too crazy here.
But he did run laps around Carlos Hyde, who was playing in the same environment, although Hyde saw considerably more volume, making it harder for him to sustain superb per-touch numbers.
| In 2017 | Rushes | Rushing NEP Per Carry | Success Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carlos Hyde | 240 | -0.09 | 41.90% |
| Matt Breida | 105 | 0.03 | 35.83% |
Secondly, we shouldn't assume McKinnon is going to be a 200-carry workhorse -- or better yet, that he can succeed as one. Yes, he got paid like a top-notch back and will likely get every chance to make this his backfield. But not only did McKinnon never have more than 159 carries in a season in Minnesota, he struggled as a runner in his two high-volume campaigns.
In 2016, he turned 159 rushes into just 539 yards and 2 scores, and he followed that up with a 150-carry, 570-yard season last year in which he scored 3 rushing tuddies. His yards-per-carry clips from those two seasons rank 37th (2016) and 32nd (2017) among backs with 100 attempts. Among the 54 running backs with at least 80 carries in 2016, McKinnon checked in 49th in Rushing NEP per carry. In 2017, he ranked 45th in Rushing NEP per carry out of the 47 runners to see at least 100 attempts.
Any way you slice it -- he wasn't very good on the ground.
On the flip side, McKinnon did average 47 catches per year the last 2 seasons and could feast through the air with Jimmy Garoppolo at the controls.
Given the financial commitment to McKinnon and the former Viking's skillset as a pass-game weapon, it's hard to envision a scenario in which Breida leapfrogs a healthy McKinnon on the depth chart in the near future, even if one beat reporter did recently call Breida the best runner on the team. But, at a minimum, Breida makes a lot of sense as a hey-why-not add given his current price.
He may end up seeing enough touches to be flex-worthy during bye weeks, and the upside is pretty dope if something were to happen to McKinnon.