Chan Gailey is well known for putting a ton of WR’s on the field. It won’t be a surprised to see the Dolphins as a league leader in 3+/4+ WR sets

But what does that mean for the RB position? I looked at Gaileys last 5 seasons as a HC/OC and found some interesting stats

A thread

Let’s start with his time in Buffalo as the HC from 2010-2012.

During these 3 season, the RB position received these targets:

2010: 90 targets
2011: 122 targets
2012: 107 targets

For comparison, the Eagles backfield received 113 targets as a whole in 2019.

During the 2010 season, Lynch appeared in 4 games before being moved to Seattle while Fred Jackson was the lead dog. Rookie CJ Spiller only received 74 attempts and 31 targets.

Fred Jackson finished as the RB21 in PPR scoring and finished with 54 targets.

During the 2011 season, Jackson was once again the lead dog and was on pace for 80 targets and a FANTASTIC year for fantasy. Unfortunately, he only played in 10 games.

Spiller finished the last 6 weeks of the season with a 16 game pace of 93 targets or, almost 6 a game.

The final season of Chan Gailey in Buffalo ended with Spiller taking a massive leap forward. As the lead RB, he received 207 rush attempts and 56 targets. Jackson only played in 10 games but still received 42 targets.

While researching, I found something interesting.

During the 2010-2012 years, it was evident that Gailey seemed to prefer a workhorse RB. 1 RB clearly dominated rush attempts and targets were a lot closer to 50/50.

However, during his tenure with the Jets, the stats doesn’t back this up at all.

Now let’s talk about his tenured with the Jets. Everyone remembers that dominating performance from Fitz, Marshall and Decker. They also had some reliable fantasy RB’s during that time too. Let’s check the stats:

2015: 118 RB targets
2016: 121 RB targets

During the 2015 season, Chris Ivory was the lead RB and dominated with 247 attempts. He even received a healthy dose of targets with 37.

However, during this time, Gailey has a pass catching specialist in Bilal Powell. Powell Received 70 attempts and 64 targets.

However, 2016 gets even weirder.

Matt Forte is one of the all time greatest pass catching backs in NFL history so he probably lead the backfield in targets, right? WRONG!

Powell our-targeted Forte 74-43 in targets. Crazy!

So what does this mean for the 2020 Dolphins? More specifically, Howard and Breida?

Howard failed to become a pass catcher in Chicago and in Philly but it doesn’t seem too outlandish to see him with 30 targets this year. He is a fantastic pass blocker and that may be enough.

But what does this mean for Breida? Historically there are at least 110 targets available in that backfield but Breida hasn’t shown any special ability as a pass catcher. He’s a fantastic play maker with the ball in his hands but does that demand pass catching duties?

The Dolphins backfield received 120 targets last year but no one brought any consistency. Could we see Laird brought in to become that pass catcher? Not impossible but I think it’s more likely that we see Breida take over this role.

So what’s the expectation?

Gailey has historically used a 2 headed monster and I think we can surely expect that to be Howard/Breida.

Breida could become the Powell to Howard’s “Ivory”. I could easily see Breida projecting 130 carries and 65 targets this year. At his current 9th round ADP, that’s a steal

A good comp for 2020 could be Duke Johnson, but with more carries.

Duke finished 2019 as the RB29 in PPR with 83 attempts and 62 targets.

I fully expect Breida to surpass 83 attempts in Miami. If he is able to gain enough targets, you could be seeing a high-end RB3 in 2020.