Thanks, McCaffrey and Fournette! College football RBs are back

— -- This story appears in ESPN College Football 2016, on newsstands June 7. Order online today!

Two elderly men sit on a bench outside Stanford's practice field, staring silently at a cardinal-colored nylon curtain covering a fence. After 20 minutes, one finally speaks over the shouting, clacking and blaring of Drake and Future's "Jumpman" coming from beyond the screen.

"Behind that wall is either a football practice or a monster truck show," he declares.

"Actually," his pal replies, "it's probably both."

Barely hidden by the curtain, the Cardinal are busy grinding toward the 2016 season, toward defending their Pac-12 title and competing for a playoff bid, towed there by running back Christian McCaffrey, the Heisman Trophy runner-up and new NCAA record holder for all-purpose yardage in a season (3,864).

Unlike with most Power 5 programs, McCaffrey and Stanford work in public, on practice fields as out in the open as Hoover Tower or the Oval. The team stretches and drills where every meandering professor or cycling student can see. Even when the Cardinal move behind the security fence for high-level tinkering, it's not hard to find a knothole gap for a sneak peek of the football laboratory.

"I'm not sure what they think they're hiding," says Old Guy No. 1.

"Yeah, I already got their playbook down," Old Guy No. 2 replies, raising his fists. "Running backs right ... running backs left ... throw it if we need to. Repeat."

He doesn't just have Stanford's playbook. He might very well have the game plan for December's playoff field. After a breakneck decade of spreading and slinging and trickeration, the running back is back.

"It's a great time to be playing football," says McCaffrey, a junior who totaled 437 touches in 2015- rushing, receiving, returning and even throwing three passes (two for TDs). "There's a lot of creativity in the game. I know we're Stanford and known for pounding the ball, but that definition isn't what it used to be. You have to do a lot of different things now, especially as a running back. It's fun."

AFTER MORE THAN a decade of riding shotgun, running backs are reclaiming their turf one carry at a time. Three of the teams projected to still be in the College Football Playoff title hunt in six months are powered by elite runners: Oklahoma ( Samaje Perine), Florida State ( Dalvin Cook) and LSU ( Leonard Fournette.)

They head a growing list of runners expected to dominate the invitation list to December's Heisman ceremony as well as the front end of next year's NFL draft.

This is on the heels of McCaffrey's losing the 2015 award to Alabama's Derrick Henry, just the third runner this century to win the bronzed prize. Last year was the first time backs finished 1-2 in Heisman voting since 2009 and only the second time since 1994. What's more, five of the top eight finalists were runners. This season three return-McCaffrey, Cook and Fournette-and they'll be challenged by other elite backs, from OU's Perine and Oregon's Royce Freeman to UNC's Elijah Hood and Georgia's duo of Nick Chubb and Sony Michel.

Even programs that have pushed the passing envelope for a decade must now admit that there's a ceiling up there in the air. You want proof? Go check out the number of pass- heavy teams engraved on the BCS or College Football Playoff trophies. We'll wait. The road to No. 1 always travels right down the middle, with the trophy tucked firmly in the elbow of a tailback.

"When I was with the Raiders, my boss Jon Gruden would say the same thing all the time," explains Stanford head coach David Shaw, who learned the game at the feet of everyone from Dennis Green and Bill Walsh as a player to Gruden, Brian Billick and Jim Harbaugh as an assistant. "What you want to do on offense is present the illusion of sophistication but all in all remain very basic. You throw stuff at the defense, different formations, but then run a regular play that we just want to execute the right way.

What does it take to execute the right way? That answer has always been the same. A smart quarterback and a great running back."

Shaw pauses, perhaps reflecting on the fact that he still hasn't chosen a QB to replace the beloved Kevin Hogan. "And if your quarterback still needs time to figure just how smart he can be, your best friend will always be a runner who can take care of things while you sort it out."

That's what Ezekiel Elliott was asked to do while Urban Meyer sifted through injured QBs in 2014-and he ran Ohio State all the way to a national championship. That's what Henry was asked to do as Nick Saban and offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin ramped Jake Coker up to speed, an approach that's become the business model at Bama (see: Mark Ingram/Greg McElroy '09 and Trent Richardson/AJ McCarron '11) and has resulted in four national titles.

So that's what will also be asked of McCaffrey and other backs during a fall that features a remarkable number of contenders saddled with big questions at quarterback. As stressful as that might be for college coaches in the short term, it already has NFL types wiping away drool thinking about drafts of the future.

Teams have praised Elliott, who was taken with the fourth pick of the draft. Elliott followed in the footsteps of Georgia's Todd Gurley, whom the Rams took 10th overall last year, the first back taken in the first round since 2012. He responded by bringing the Rams just their second NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year Award since they drafted Jerome Bettis out of Notre Dame the year before Gurley was born.

"I think running backs are coming out of college with an expanded knowledge of the game that they simply didn't have before," explains Saban, who coached two of the seven first-round backs selected since 2011. "Even at places like Alabama or Stanford where we might be labeled as 'traditional' or 'pro style,' whatever you want to call it, we are always probing. We are always adding wrinkles. So as a result we are asking running backs to do more and process more and be more multidimensional all of the time. They are becoming like second quarterbacks on the field.

"But," he adds rather sharply, "it has to be the right kid to handle all of that. I can ask anybody to do this stuff. That doesn't mean they can."

BACK ON THE FARM, Shaw and McCaffrey emerge from behind the practice field fence. The two old men are long gone. The player politely takes selfies with a waiting family, while the coach stops to chat with a couple of reporters.

He's immediately hit with a "2016: Comeback of the Running Back" question. With Drake and Future turned down, he accidentally (maybe) assumes the old-school role of LL Cool J.

"I always like to see what kind of a label people come up with for a season," Shaw says. "Yeah, other places might plan to use backs more, but when they hit October and times get tough, they'll go back to doing what they do. And we'll still do what we do. I wouldn't call it a comeback. Not here at Stanford. That's how we've been here for years."