Packers: Ty Montgomery’s exit should lead to more Aaron Jones carries

The Green Bay Packers had been using their three running backs by committee trying to get everyone involved. But with the recent trade of Ty Montgomery, Mike McCarthy must start giving Aaron Jones more rushing attempts.

The Green Bay Packers are through eight weeks in the NFL’s regular season and it appears that head coach Mike McCarthy still hasn’t completely figured out that running back Aaron Jones needs to be on the field more and receiving more touches.

With the Packers shipping off Ty Montgomery to Baltimore, we can only hope that McCarthy will get Jones the ball more, now that he doesn’t feel the need to incorporate Montgomery in to the offense.

Well Mike, the Packers are at a critical point in the season and if you’re going to start feeding Aaron Jones the ball, it’s now or never.

McCarthy and Jones

Aaron Jones missed the first two games of the season due to a suspension, but in his first game back we saw just how dynamic he can be.

However, since then McCarthy has been very slow in giving Jones more playing time. It wasn’t until this past week against the LA Rams that we saw Jones take a majority of the snaps at running back, but still only ran the ball 12 times.

Whether Jones’ lack of playing time is because of McCarthy’s concerns about his pass-blocking ability or it’s due to Jones having missed the first two games, we don’t know. But we do know that McCarthy and his staff needs to rethink this approach.

On the season Jones has played in five of Green Bay’s games and during those games he has accumulated a total of 44 carries. That is only 8.8 rushing attempts per game for Jones; this is absolutely unacceptable for a player of his caliber.

Jones is averaging 6.2 yards per carry, which amongst qualified running backs leads the NFL. Pro Football Focus (PFF) has Jones ranked as the 11th best overall running back in the league.

He is an explosive player that is difficult to bring down and has big-play potential whenever he touches the ball.

The Packers are a better team when Jones is in the game, for most this is pretty easy to see.

Currently, Green Bay passes the ball 67.67 percent of the time according to Team Rankings, which is the second most in the NFL, and their red zone offense has struggled as well this season. By giving Jones more snaps, this will help solve some of these inefficiencies on offense.

More snaps for Jones with Montgomery gone?

After Sunday’s debacle and Ty Montgomery’s foolish mistake, the Packers had no choice but to move on from him. A number of anonymous veterans on the Packers made comments on Montgomery’s decision and it appears that the trust within the locker room could not be repaired.

It’s an unfortunate ending for Montgomery in Green Bay but a positive is that it will hopefully force McCarthy to give Jones more touches.

Montgomery is a talented player but Green Bay has many weapons on offense and there just aren’t enough snaps to go around for everyone. Montgomery has played in 23.11 percent of the Packers’ snaps on offense this season, according to Pro Football Reference, far too many for the third best running back option.

Those snaps that Montgomery was taking at running back need to go somewhere and McCarthy needs to realize that Aaron Jones is the answer.

McCarthy has always seemed concerned about getting all of his running backs opportunities and you have to wonder if the constant changing of personnel effected the rhythm of this Packers offense.

We all know the main reason that Montgomery was traded, but is it a possibility that GM Brian Gutekunst wanted to force McCarthy’s hand and make him play Aaron Jones more by removing Montgomery from the equation?

Whether Jones receiving more touches was Gutekunst’s intention or whether it is just a potential result from the Montgomery trade, at this point we can only hope it happens.

Moving forward we will see if this trade impacts the number of carries for Aaron Jones, but I’ll say it once again, it’s now or never Mike.