When it comes to David Montgomery, these two things are true: he's a good running back who could have had a better rookie year.
(Maybe too) Much was expected from Montgomery when the Bears traded up to get him in the third round of last year's draft. While he appeared in every game of the 2019 season, he only started eight, putting up 889 yards on the ground (3.7 YPC) with six touchdowns. Add his 25 catches and 185 receiving yards to the mix and you start to see the fuller, slightly underwhelming picture. It's not really even his fault – realistic expectations never had a chance:
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Montgomery's role, and fit, in the 2020 Bears' offense feels a bit more complicated than a first glance might suggest. In many ways, Montgomery's a prototypical feature back; his workload was an almost-weekly topic of conversation during press conferences last year. The problem, of course, is that Matt Nagy's just not going to do that. And maybe that's to his credit – an increasing amount of evidence says that traditional rushing approaches have no place in modern football. The Bears only ran the ball 39% of the time last year, but of those 395 rushes, Montgomery had 61% of them (242).
That speaks to a few different things, 2019's lack of offensive creativity being primary among them. A two-back system where one guy has 242 carries and the other (Tarik Cohen) has 64 isn't really a two-back system, and teams keyed into that all too often last season. Per NFL's Next Gen stats, Montgomery saw 8-man boxes 19.83% of the time last season, a clip almost identical to the likes of Ezekiel Elliot, Josh Jacobs, and Aaron Jones. He wasn't particularly efficient in an under center offense, either: Per Sharp Stats, he averaged 3.3 YPC in the offense – a number which looks even worse when you consider that it dropped below 3.0 on second (2.9), third (1.6), and fourth down (1.5). And the worst part? He was in those formations for 50% of his rushes.
The good news is that the situation's not quite as depressing as it's sounded so far. There's hope that new offensive line coach Juan Castillo can mesh things in a way that Harry Hiestand and Mark Helfich couldn't. And for all his woes under center, Montgomery was actually quite productive in shotgun. Those abysmal YPC numbers looked *way* better when he was in that offense: 4.0 overall, 4.0 on first down, 4.4 on second down, and 2.1 (welp) on third. We'll ignore the fact that PFF gave him a very poor pass blocking grade (41.8) because this is the optimism paragraph. He broke 28 tackles last season – tied for the 6th-most in football – and finished 7th in rush attempts per broken tackle (8.6).
Montgomery's already a useful player, and frankly it feels a bit ridiculous to even be talking about his limitations after only one season in the league. There's a great player, and fit, in Montgomery – it's just up to the Bears to find it.
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