A Quick Turnaround: Why Green Bay Packers beat Chicago Bears
By Kenn Korb
The New RB
The running back rotation for this team has quickly turned into the injury-marred mess that the wide receiver spot was for them in 2015.
In the past couple weeks we’ve seen Eddie Lacy damage his ankle (first limiting his snaps and effectiveness; now, it has sent him to IR) and James Starks tear his meniscus (putting him out of commission for a few weeks following surgery).
With those two being the only pure running backs on the roster, Green Bay had to not only pull someone up from the practice squad (Don Jackson), but make their first in-season trade since 2010 (acquiring Knile Davis for a conditional draft pick) just to have a couple natural running backs to throw out there. This wasn’t the end of the problems either, unfortunately; Jackson ended up hurting his hand, leaving Davis (who had only been with the team a few days) as the main running option for most of the game.
Or so it seemed.
With the injury to Jackson, Green Bay decided not to put the ball in Davis’ hands; instead, they turned to Ty Montgomery. Montgomery had taken some snaps in the backfield in recent weeks — with a few carries to his name in that time — but none of those amounted to the kind of production that would seem to warrant much expectation of success going forward (5 rushes for 7 yards while fumbling twice — losing one).
The early going of this game didn’t prove much better for him either, rushing for 9 yards on 3 carries in the first half (including a 7 yard run, but also getting stuffed on 4th & 1 on the goalline), but in the second half we saw Montgomery become much more effective in this backfield role.
Following a terrible fumble recovery TD by the Bears to put Green Bay down 10-6, they began their next drive with a handoff to Montgomery in the backfield. While everyone watching probably expected this was just another effort destined to end quickly as part of an attempt to keep the thought of running the ball somewhere in the Bears defenses’ heads, surprisingly it wasn’t; he proceeded to break through the defense for a 30 yard rush to get the Packers up near midfield in a hurry.
That strong effort was only the beginning of a change in the Packers’ offensive plan: to heavily utilize formations which placed Montgomery in the backfield. On this drive in particular, that huge run was part of 5 plays in total (including four straight) where he was the target.
After the big run, Montgomery was hit for a 5 yard catch, a 3 yard run, and a 6 yard catch; after a handful of short plays to other players, Aaron Rodgers returned to looking for Montgomery, finding him for a superb 7 yard catch on third down; following a challenge (which upheld his excellent effort to protect the ball from ever hitting the ground), Green Bay had another first down in what ended as a touchdown drive to take the lead for good.
On the night, Montgomery saw the most combined action of any non-Rodgers player. He had 9 rushes for 60 yards, as well as 10 catches for 66 yards. Most importantly however would be his snap numbers: his 60 total were more than he had garnered through the previous five games combined, and 49 of those came from out of the backfield.
Montgomery has been a player many (including myself and Pro Football Focus) have wanted to see the Packers find ways to utilize better all year, and putting him as the running back is something I’ve talked about for a few weeks as a way to do so (especially considering the injury issues with Lacy and Starks).
Seeing how well Montgomery was able to produce in this role — and given that the team’s usual options in the backfield won’t be available for some time — we can expect to see a lot more usage of him in this role going forward.