NFC North 2018 running back power rankings: Detroit Lions in the middle

Running backs are not the straw that stirs the drink in the modern NFL. That honor goes to the quarterbacks. The running backs are more like the ice cubes within the drink being stirred. There are few things more awful than a drink that should be ice cold sitting, instead, at room temperature. Whether you are using crushed ice in a Margherita, dozens of cubes in a soda from a fast food chain, the single cube that makes that awful scotch your cousin bought you while he was in Edinburgh because he knows you like whisky drinkable, or a citrus slurry floating on top of a Hoegaarden, you need ice to make these drinks work. Running backs, like ice cubes, are the things that make an offense work.

There are short yardage specialists, bell cows, passing down specialists, and players who fit none of these roles very well. The running backs of the NFC North are as distinctive as the offenses utilizing them. Some teams have extremely specialized players. Other teams take more of a plug and play approach, asking each back to perform the same tasks despite their varied skill sets.

This is not an attempt to divine which team will have the most rushing yardage, or rank the individual players. All I am saying here is that if I were putting together a team using the position groups as a whole, this is the order I would rank them. How the coaches deploy their roster is not my concern.