Carlos Hyde is the perfect fit for Chip Kelly’s 49ers

Last season started off like gangbusters for 49ers running back Carlos Hyde. In Week 1, he looked downright unstoppable against the Vikings, rushing for 168 yards and two touchdowns while averaging an eye-popping six and a half yards per carry. And it wasn’t like he just had one big run that skewed his numbers that night. His longest carry of the game only went for 18 yards.

He consistently gashed the Vikings inside and outside all game long. They really didn’t seem to have an answer for him.

Unfortunately injury after injury derailed the rest of his season. First, it was a concussion in Week 2 that took him out of that game. Then, it was a thigh injury he also suffered in Week 2 that limited him for a couple of games. Then, there was of course the foot injury, initially sustained in a Week 5 loss to the Giants during which he’d finally looked healthy again. That eventually ended his year a couple of weeks later when he re-injured it against the Seahawks.

All told he still managed to rush for 470 yards and three touchdowns in seven games with a respectable 4.1 yards per carry average, but those numbers were definitely skewed by Week 1. The rest of the season while he was dealing with all those injuries he was mostly mediocre, and I’m being pretty charitable with that.

Job No. 1 for Hyde has to be staying healthy, something he hasn’t been able to do his first two seasons in the league. As the saying goes, he’s hell when he’s well, but he just hasn’t been well all that often, missing a total of 11 games so far in his career.

Enter Chip Kelly, who somehow, some way made his Philadelphia Eagles teams some of the healthiest in the league while he was there. You can criticize him for a lot of things, but Kelly seems to be ahead of the league when it comes to keeping his players ready and available for all 16 games. Whether it’s a function of his devotion to sports science or if he just has some secret rabbit’s foot that nobody knows about, chances are Hyde will be put in the best position to stay healthy this year.

That may be even more important to Hyde’s production than the offensive scheme Kelly is bringing with him, but make no mistake about it: Hyde is perfect for that system.

Before you even get to the actual running part of playing running back for Kelly, it’s important to note that Hyde is a well-rounded back. Even in his limited opportunities, he has shown that he is smooth catching the ball out of the backfield and can also block well enough when called upon to do so.

That’s important because Kelly likes to feature his backs not only in the running game but in the passing game as well. Last season, Eagles running backs caught 128(!) balls combined. You can expect that Hyde is going to see his fair share of targets this year as well.

The fact that Hyde can do it all means he also will have the opportunity to stay in on third downs too, especially with there not being a Darren Sproles type on the roster.

Back to the scheme. Hyde already has experience running out of a lot of one-back sets -- albeit more so out of the pistol or just the dot with the quarterback under center -- than offset in shotgun as he is likely to find himself more often than not this season.

What I saw from Hyde last year was a guy who was patient, a guy who did a good job of reading his blockers and also a guy who was decisive with his cuts. If the hole opened early, Hyde had no problem sticking his foot in the ground and getting upfield. If it took a little longer to develop, Hyde would continue on and many times showed a surprising amount of speed and burst to bounce the play outside to the edge.

That’s perfect for the kinds of things Kelly likes to do in the running game.

Yeah, there will be some read option stuff, but there will also be some inside traps and sweeps as well. As long as a running back is decisive with his cuts and has enough speed to get through the holes in a hurry, they should be good money in Kelly’s system.

Let me say this: Hyde is 6’0 and was 235 pounds last year (which is right on the edge of “big back” territory), but he ran more like a scat back a lot of the times. I’m not talking just straight line speed either. I thought he had some pretty good jukes for a running back that size. At the same time, when he needed to fight through arm tackles or get the tough three yards in a cloud of dust he was pretty adept at that as well. He said recently that he wants to lose some weight to prepare for the uptempo style of Kelly’s offense, but even at 225 pounds, Hyde should be a handful for opposing defenses to deal with.

So, to reiterate, Carlos Hyde simply has to stay healthy this year or his career may well effectively be over before it even really gets started. If he does find a way to stay healthy, I expect him to put up huge numbers this year both as a runner and a receiver. I think 1,500 yards rushing may actually be his floor if Hyde plays all 16 games. I gotta admit that’s a huge “if.”