Clayton: Marshawn Lynch’s success has spawned the trend toward power backs

Jim Brown, Earl Campbell, Christian Okoye, Natrone Means, Jerome Bettis. The list of battering ram tailbacks goes on and on.

But while Marshawn Lynch was not the first big, powerful back to find success in the NFL, is he the impetus for the latest wave of bruisers in the backfield?

John Clayton talked Wednesday with 710 ESPN Seattle’s “Brock and Salk” about how teams increasingly seem to be mirroring the Seahawks’ success with their own version of Beast Mode at tailback.

“That’s the trend right now, and maybe it is because everybody has seen the success with Marshawn and you want that type of back,” Clayton said.

While Clayton mentioned Green Bay’s Eddie Lacy and Atlanta’s Devonta Freeman as stout bulldozers that have found recent success, Mike Salk believes the Jets’ Chris Ivory and the Rams’ Todd Gurley are the two most Lynchian backs in the NFL.

Salk and Clayton agreed that it seems coaches are going out of their way to find bigger backs who can wear down the defense, rather than the speedsters that were previously en vogue, a la Chris Johnson.

“I think that’s exactly what teams are starting to do now,” Clayton said. “They realize, yeah, you can have your third-down, pass-catching back, but you need that guy to hit the hole and try to punish people, and I think more teams seem to be going to that.”

KIRO TV’s Jesse Jones, filling in for Brock Huard, said he enjoys seeing the bigger backs rumble.

“Watching those guys play with that physicality is just inspiring and I think a lot of it is coming from guys like Marshawn,” he said. “…Marshawn is a little older now and these kids watched him play and now they’re playing like him. He’s inspiring other football players, but I think, man, Gurley is scary good.”

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