May 6, 2020

Please don't misconstrue the headline as me believing talent is more important than situation and opportunity. Talent only matters to the extent that a running back needs to meet a talent threshold to produce in favorable conditions. The vast majority of running backs are at least replacement level. Unfortunately, David Montgomery, or at least the version we saw in college and in 2019, does not. I include that caveat because we must acknowledge the possibility that Montgomery got better. He has apparently been training with a Chicago Sports Performance Doctor. Can a specialist combined with his desire to be great overcome Montgomery's lack of speed and burst? We can't know for sure, but I'm certainly betting against it. Montgomery was such an obvious fraud prospect. He averaged a putrid 4.7 ypc at Iowa State and his 4.63 speed is just not NFL caliber except for extreme outliers. Montgomery's best ability was supposedly his pass catching acumen. Well, he plays with a guy named Tarik Cohen and he will never be better than Cohen in the passing game. Montgomery saw just 35 targets over a full 16 games as a rookie. Montgomery played 57.9% of the snaps last year and it was pretty consistent all season. Montgomery was the RB32 last season, averaging 10.2 ppg. It's difficult to see where Montgomery can improve. He scored seven touchdowns, which seems about right. He had 1074 total yards, which seems about right. He caught 25 passes, which seems about right. Unless Montgomery suddenly becomes more athletic, his absolute ceiling is low RB2. There is a point at which it's worth it to take a shot on him, but someone else in your league probably likes him a lot more than you do. I want nothing to do with a guy I don't expect to be in the NFL after his rookie contract expires.--Jason Katz