With Travis Etienne out for the year, I find myself having some interest in Carlos Hyde. Assuming everyone stays healthy, James Robinson should be Jacksonville’s leading running back, but Hyde might be an above-average No. 2.
Hyde is 30, but I think he can still play. He ran for 1,070 yards with Houston two years ago, and he ran for 79 yards and a touchdown in his only start last year (with the Seahawks). Hyde had a handful of really big games with the 49ers, and he played under Urban Meyer when he was in college.
I would think Hyde will get some carries rotating in behind Robinson, and there might not be much of a dropoff should they plug him into the starting lineup at some point.
Hyde isn’t much of a pass catcher; no getting around that. He’s been in the league for seven seasons, and he’s never averaged more than 6.0 yards per catch.
Hyde weighs 229 pounds and can bang it inside pretty good, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he gets more carries than Robinson when the team is at the goal line.
Over the last two years, 36 running backs have had at least 14 carries when their team has needed 1 yard to either score or keep a drive alive (on third- or fourth-and-one). Hyde is the only one of those backs who’s converted over 80 percent of his attempts on such plays.
I’ll admit 14 attempts is an obscure number to pick for the minimum attempts, but I wanted to get Robinson to show on the chart. I thought he was fine on those carries last year, converted 9 of 14 attempts on a bad team. All but 1 of Hyde’s carries, meanwhile, came back in 2019 (so I’m not saying it’s a foregone conclusion that he’ll be the goal-line back).
But if we’re picking backs who might be decent if the starter ahead of them gets hurt, I think Hyde arguably should be one of the first 15 such backs selected.
| SHORT-YARDAGE RUSHING (2019-20) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Player | Good | Att | Pct |
| Carlos Hyde | 13 | 16 | 81.3% |
| Alvin Kamara | 15 | 19 | 78.9% |
| Gus Edwards | 26 | 33 | 78.8% |
| Derrick Henry | 33 | 42 | 78.6% |
| Kenyan Drake | 28 | 36 | 77.8% |
| Jamaal Williams | 17 | 22 | 77.3% |
| Todd Gurley | 23 | 30 | 76.7% |
| Malcolm Brown | 13 | 17 | 76.5% |
| Ezekiel Elliott | 34 | 45 | 75.6% |
| Chris Carson | 30 | 40 | 75.0% |
| Peyton Barber | 21 | 28 | 75.0% |
| Kalen Ballage | 17 | 23 | 73.9% |
| Leonard Fournette | 21 | 29 | 72.4% |
| Jonathan Taylor | 13 | 18 | 72.2% |
| Ronald Jones | 14 | 20 | 70.0% |
| Dalvin Cook | 27 | 39 | 69.2% |
| Sony Michel | 13 | 19 | 68.4% |
| David Johnson | 16 | 24 | 66.7% |
| James Conner | 14 | 21 | 66.7% |
| Mike Davis | 10 | 15 | 66.7% |
| Myles Gaskin | 10 | 15 | 66.7% |
| James Robinson | 9 | 14 | 64.3% |
| Melvin Gordon | 16 | 25 | 64.0% |
| Adrian Peterson | 13 | 21 | 61.9% |
| Joe Mixon | 18 | 30 | 60.0% |
| LeVeon Bell | 12 | 20 | 60.0% |
| Joshua Kelley | 9 | 15 | 60.0% |
| Miles Sanders | 9 | 15 | 60.0% |
| David Montgomery | 18 | 31 | 58.1% |
| Nick Chubb | 15 | 26 | 57.7% |
| Benny Snell | 19 | 33 | 57.6% |
| Christian McCaffrey | 10 | 18 | 55.6% |
| Josh Jacobs | 19 | 35 | 54.3% |
| Kareem Hunt | 7 | 14 | 50.0% |
| Aaron Jones | 10 | 22 | 45.5% |
| Frank Gore | 9 | 24 | 37.5% |
—Ian Allan