Matt Breida carries more than just the load for the Niners. He carries a devotion to family and work ethic that has made him a surprise—and grateful—star.
It’s 2011 in Hernando county, Florida, and Rob Kazmier is crafting impassioned, personalized pleas to college coaches on behalf of a running back who is south of 160 pounds and several inches shy of 6 feet.
“I don’t want this kid flying under the radar!!!” Kazmier writes one December day. “He is the whole package—great kid, great student.”
The notes are about Matt Breida, a record-setting junior at Nature Coast Technical High School, and they are largely met with indifference. Florida and Florida State aren’t interested. Neither is UCF or USF. SEC schools can’t be bothered. Kazmier, an assistant at Nature Coast at the time, keeps up the marketing. “People get stuck on the cookie-cutter size,” says Kazmier, now the head coach at a nearby high school. “Purdue … they never responded.”
Georgia Southern does—and signs Breida in February 2013.
Five years later, Kazmier looks especially prescient. Breida, now listed at 5-11, 190 pounds and built like a world-class sprinter, with a chiseled jaw and lean muscles, is one of the NFL’s leading rushers and biggest surprises in his second year with the 49ers. Through Week 9, he ranked third in rushing yards per carry (5.5) among players averaging 10 or more carries and was ninth in total rushing yards (531) despite being slowed by an ankle injury in recent weeks.
Breida is a bright spot in an otherwise lost year for the 49ers, who entered the fall with modest playoff hopes that were quickly extinguished when quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo—5–0 in five starts to close out 2017—went down with a season-ending knee injury in September.
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