"Christian McCaffrey cannot run between the tackles."

That's what the scouting reports said and what so many observers have concluded, including some of us who should know better.

"Sure, McCaffrey has potential to be a great receiver out of the backfield—a changeup back, slot weapon, punt returner or whatever," we claimed. "But he's not cut out for a 25-touch, all-purpose role."

"He's too small, not built to take the pounding."

"He's too quick to go to the ground."

"He takes his foot off the gas when he's hit."

When the Panthers drafted McCaffrey eighth overall in 2017, it felt like a reach. When they hired Norv Turner to run their offense, it felt like a bad fit. Turner likes workhorse runners like Emmitt Smith, LaDainian Tomlinson and Frank Gore, not modern catch-first committee backs.

Panthers observers grew weary of watching McCaffrey get fed to the teeth of the defense as a rookie in Mike Shula's offense. But we figured Turner's retro-'90s offense could get McCaffrey snapped like a twig.

McCaffrey heard the typecasting and grew tired of it.

"It definitely bothers me," he said after Sunday's win over the Bengals, per Jourdan Rodrigue of the Charlotte Observer. "But the more and more I go through this league, I learned that it's never been about proving anyone wrong or proving anybody right. Just proving myself right."

So far this season, McCaffrey has proved himself right and all of us doubters wrong.

McCaffrey ranks third in the NFL with 271 rushing yards. He's second to Alvin Kamara with 428 yards from scrimmage. He followed a 14-catch, 102-yard receiving performance in Week 2—the kind of game we expected from him—with a rugged 28-carry, 184-yard rushing performance in the Panthers' 31-21 victory over the Bengals in Week 3.

A running back doesn't rush 28 times for 184 yards without getting the job done between the tackles. It turns out that—surprise, surprise—McCaffrey is a fine interior runner, in addition to being a great receiver and a nifty-shifty open-field threat.

Football Outsiders ranks the Panthers as the second-best up-the-middle rushing team in the NFL, averaging 5.28 yards per carry (after analytical adjustments) between the guards. The Panthers also run between the guards on 79 percent of rushes, well above the league average of 55 percent, with McCaffrey seeing the bulk of the action. And all of that bruising interior rushing is coming behind an offensive line so injury-plagued that the Panthers traded for reinforcements earlier in the week.

McCaffrey also ranks eighth in the NFL with 13 broken tackles, per Football Outsiders: seven on runs and six on receptions.

Don't believe the numbers? Sunday's sizzle reel is worth a hundred analytical breakdowns. Watch McCaffrey stiff-arm Bengals linebacker Hardy Nickerson to the ground. Watch him squirt through arm tackles and make defenders miss with smooth cuts and quick decisions. Watch him finish every run and force defenders to work for every tackle.

McCaffrey is effective between the tackles, on the edge, in the passing game: an all-purpose back in the best sense of the word.

"He's obviously not just a receiving back, he's a total running back," Cam Newton said after the game, per Rodrigue. "He shows signs that this is not a fluke; he's been doing this his whole career—collegiately as well as professionally."

"Everybody forgets when he was in college he ran between the tackles more than anybody and he touched the ball more than anybody," head coach Ron Rivera said during minicamp, per David Newton of ESPN.com, adding that a 25-30 touch-per-game role would be "ideal" for McCaffrey.

The 25-touch workload sounded a little nutty at the time, and it may still be a bit unrealistic. But McCaffrey averaged 24 attempted touches per game through three games this season if you count incomplete passes thrown his way. So far, he shows no signs of breaking, and the Panthers offense is humming.

So, why did so many of us pigeonhole McCaffrey as some kind of specialist instead of an every-down featured back?

McCaffrey is just 5'11" and 205 pounds. He's the son of a wide receiver, and he sometimes lined up at that position in college. He's white, which matters when we're discussing preconceptions and wondering why a back who rushed for 3,922 yards in his college career gets stuffed into the Danny Woodhead bin instead of the Saquon Barkley bin. (Yes, Barkley is much bigger. Which should have made his college inconsistency between the tackles less excusable.)

There's also the old perception about featured running backs as 220-pound pile drivers that somehow never dies. Every Sunday, we watch small, quick backs line up all over the field and use their versatility to exploit mismatches in pass-heavy offenses. Then winter comes, and draftniks, experts and (some) front offices evaluate running backs by comparing them, unfavorably, to an obsolete 30-carry battering-ram archetype.

Running up the middle in today's NFL isn't really about dragging tacklers the way Earl Campbell did in 1978. It's about vision and decisiveness on zone plays and about patience and setting up blocks when linemen and fullbacks (the Panthers still have one of those) are pulling or trapping in front of you. McCaffrey has improved in all of these experience-based skills since his rookie year.

Former Panthers general manager Dave Gettleman deserves credit for seeing through the misconceptions and recognizing McCaffrey's all-purpose value last year. Gettleman is taking some heat for drafting Barkley, another all-purpose rusher/receiver, over a quarterback for the Giants this year. But unlike the Giants, the Panthers are set at quarterback for the foreseeable future.

The oft-maligned Turner also deserves credit. Some of McCaffrey's interior runs are old-fashioned, Emmitt/LaDainian-style power plunges behind a fullback and a pulling guard. But Turner has also embraced some of the possibilities of the Newton-triggered lead option. When Newton fakes an option keeper after handing off to McCaffrey, linebackers freeze just long enough to give the Panthers' patchwork offensive line a chance to block them, creating creases for McCaffrey to squeak through.

Turner also deserves credit for committing to giving McCaffrey lots of different kinds of touches instead of falling into the screen/reverse/decoy trap. The every-down role even makes occasional McCaffrey decoys, like C.J. Anderson's screen-pass touchdown after a fake pitch to McCaffrey on the other side of the field, more effective because opponents must be ready for anything when either (or both) of the backs is on the field.

But the guy doing the actual rushing (and receiving) deserves most of the credit. It takes toughness and courage to run between the tackles in the NFL at 200 pounds. It takes dedication and intelligence to balance that with a multifaceted receiving role. And it takes exceptional talent to be effective at both.

Tiki Barber was a little back with that complete package. Jamaal Charles and Maurice Jones-Drew are other examples. If you want to get a bit carried away, there's Marshall Faulk.

But let's pump the breaks before we venture into Faulk-Tiki comparisons. For now, let's just put the "can't run between the tackles" storyline to bed.

"I'm just here to play ball, not answer anybody's questions," McCaffrey said in the preseason when asked, as he often is, whether he can cut it as an every-down back.

It's time to stop asking, because his play is making the critics look silly.

Mike Tanier covers the NFL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @MikeTanier.