For those of you who can’t remember or were too young back then, let me tell you a little bit about former All-Pro running back Chris Johnson, and how he altered the mode of the every-down back.
Back in the day, if you weren’t at least 220 pounds, you could pretty much forget about being a lead-back in the NFL. In that era, teams were handing the ball off to their featured back 20-plus times on a routine basis. Then Johnson came along and set the league on fire. Ultra-rare speed and shiftiness combined with some really underrated toughness quickly made Johnson one of the best players in the entire league.