RB: David Montgomery - DET

I'm not saying that you're going to be happy with every single game that David Montgomery gives you in 2024, but overall, his body of work this coming season should give you a really safe RB2 floor. To begin last year, he started off hot. In his first seven games of the season, he was a top-10 running back in four of those games. Some expectations were set that Jahmyr Gibbs wasn't going to get his, that David Montgomery was the guy, and so on and so forth.

Well, the second half of the season was a lot different story. Jahmyr Gibbs was the guy. David Montgomery still had solid games, don't get me wrong, but now heading into 2024, recency bias has a lot of people looking at Jahmyr Gibbs and saying he's the guy, and David Montgomery isn't going to get nearly enough. Because of that, maybe David Montgomery isn't going to give us the upside that we would like. But that's where your thinking is wrong.

If you're looking at David Montgomery for upside, you are going to be disappointed. If you look at him for his floor, though, you're going to get exactly what you want because David Montgomery's floor is an RB2. Over his last seven games of the season, he was a running back two five times. The other two games, he just barely missed it, finishing as the RB25 in those two games. So, over the course of his last seven games of the 2023 season, David Montgomery was a top-25 running back all seven games.

That is where we make our money with David Montgomery. If we draft him as our RB2 and expect good solid RB2 numbers every single week, we are going to be happy with the performance that we get. If we draft him hoping that he's an RB1 more than he's an RB2, then that's where you get disappointed. Maybe his ceiling doesn't become as high as what Jahmyr Gibbs' is because Jahmyr Gibbs overall may end up seeing more touches due to his work in the passing game. But David Montgomery should see the good majority of the touches on the ground. When he does get some dump-offs or a few designed passing plays, he always makes the most of those, giving us those really nice, safe floor days. And of course, he'll score plenty of touchdowns.