Fantasy Football 2025: RB David Montgomery player profile

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• David Montgomery was a consistent fantasy starter: Montgomery was among the top-24 fantasy running backs in 82 percent of his games since joining the Detroit Lions.
• The Detroit Lions lost Ben Johnson: The Lions had a unique running back rotation, which allowed both Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs to be fantasy-relevant. Under John Morton, a change in the running back rotation could turn Montgomery from a fantasy starter to a backup.
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Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

PFF’s Fantasy Football Player Profile series delivers the most in-depth fantasy football analysis available for the 2025 season.

Using PFF’s exclusive data, we evaluate player performance, competition for touches and how teammates and coaching staffs

Last updated: 7:15 a.m. Saturday, May 24

Player performance

David Montgomery spent the first four seasons of his career with the Chicago Bears. He was sometimes a feature back, leading him to the fourth-most fantasy points in 2020. Khalil Herbert emerged as a legitimate threat, taking some of Montgomery’s carries and playing time. He was still a borderline fantasy starter during his final two years in Chicago but made them more comfortable moving on from Montgomery in free agency.

Detroit just had Jamaal Williams run 262 times for 1,066 yards and 17 touchdowns in 2022, but Detroit decided to upgrade with Montgomery over Williams. That offseason, the Lions also added Jahmyr Gibbs in the draft and traded D’Andre Swift. This left Montgomery sharing the backfield with Gibbs. It’s rare for a team to have two running backs who can both be fantasy-relevant on a weekly basis, but the Lions have made it work.

Montgomery averaged 15 carries per game with a high first-down conversion rate. He rarely broke long runs and averaged just over one reception per game, but he scored 13 touchdowns. While he had a three-touchdown game, those scores were generally spread out, as he didn’t score in only three games.

In 2024, it was a lot of the same for Montgomery. His first down rate remained high, and he scored in 10 of 14 games. He lost a small amount of carries per game, which impacted his rushing yards, but he made up for it by getting much more involved in the passing game, as he did throughout his career with the Bears. He was elite as a receiving back when given the opportunity. His 2.24 yards per route run were the most for all running backs with at least 50 routes.

His 0.062 rushing touchdowns per attempt are the most for running backs over the last two seasons, and that rate barely fluctuated from 2023 to 2024. His 11.607 rushing fantasy points per game ranks seventh-most among the same time span.

Projected role

The Lions kept the running back depth chart identical this season, including Craig Reynolds as the third back on the depth chart and Sione Vaki as the fourth back and special-teams player.

While Montgomery tends to play at the goal line, Montgomery would usually start the game and play more as the game progressed, while Gibbs would play less in the first quarter and more as the game went on. This allowed Montgomery to wear down the defenses to help Gibbs shine later on.

Both he and Gibbs received the ball more frequently when they were on the field compared to last season. It wouldn’t be surprising if those rates regress at least a little bit this season to get other skill players more involved in the offense.

Impact of teammates

Former Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson earned the head coach job at the Chicago Bears. Scottie Montgomery had been working with the running backs, but now, he’s working with the wide receivers. John Morton is the Lions’ new offensive coordinator, and he hasn’t worked with Morton before. Tashard Choice was added as the running back coach after a seven-year NFL career and working as a running back coach in college, most recently at Texas.

In recent seasons, Morton has been part of teams using a committee in the backfield, but he also has experience with feature backs, most notably Josh Jacobs. However, in his one season as an NFL offensive coordinator with the New York Jets in 2017, he had a three-back committee with Bilal Powell, Matt Forte and Elijah McGuire. Morton has stressed the importance of explosive plays, which is something Gibbs is exceptional at. We should expect how snaps and touches are distributed to change under Morton’s offense. Most of the potential changes should be positive instead of negative for Gibbs, and negative instead of positive for Montgomery.

In Morton’s one season with New York, Powell took a higher rate of snaps at the goal line than in normal situations, despite being the lightest of their three running backs. In his stints with the Las Vegas Raiders and Denver Broncos, those teams had their lead running back take high rates of goal-line snaps, even though both teams had larger running backs on the bench. This could mean some major touchdown regression for Montgomery.

Montgomery benefits from having an excellent offensive line in front of him. Penei Sewell is the top run-blocking right tackle, and Frank Ragnow is the second-best run-blocking center in the league. Left tackle Taylor Decker has nearly a decade of history of great pass blocking but has been consistently good as a run blocker. The concern is at guard, where Graham Glasgow had a down year and will be 33 years old by the start of the season. Kevin Zeitler left in free agency. Christian Mahogany looked excellent on a small sample of 63 run blocks as a rookie, including a 91.9 run-blocking grade against the Washington Commanders in the playoffs as a starter. How he performs in his second year will likely determine if the Lions have the best offensive line in the league or just a top-five one. Regardless, this line is a big reason why Montgomery has been able to be so successful despite playing under 50% of Detroit’s offensive snaps.

Bottom line

If Ben Johnson remained the offensive coordinator with the Detroit Lions, Montgomery would be a relatively safe option to set in your fantasy starting lineup each week, even if his upside is limited. However, with John Morton, there is a risk that he will mostly become a handcuff option to Jahmyr Gibbs.

Footnotes

• Statistics in tables and charts were chosen based on their ability to predict future fantasy performance on a per-game or per-opportunity basis or to describe the player relative to others at the same position.
• “Opportunities” are defined as passing dropbacks, rushing attempts and routes run as a receiver.
• Numbers are provided either by season or based on the past three years. For rookies, only college statistics are included. For non-rookies, only NFL statistics are considered, regardless of whether they played in college within the previous three years.
• As college competition is easier than NFL competition, most rookies are likely to see a decline from their historical numbers.
• Only FBS data is considered for college players and comparisons.
• Kneel-downs are removed from rushing data to provide cleaner quarterback rushing rate statistics.
• The table colors in this article range from blue (indicating good/high) to red (indicating bad/low).
• All percentiles and color codings compare the given player to others with a high sample of opportunities. Generally, the cutoff is one-third of the possible opportunities in the sample. If a player does not meet the threshold, they are still included in the comparison, though their results may appear better or worse than expected due to the smaller, less predictive sample size.
• Information on utilization classifications and their importance can be found here for running backs, wide receivers and tight ends.

This news was originally published on this post .

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