efficient but volume-starved in Detroit, now the lead back in Houston. Betting a role reverses a decline.
David Montgomery 2026 Season Preview — a decline, a trade, a new lead role
Show notes & transcript▾
David Montgomery just posted the worst fantasy season of his recent career as the small slice of a three-man Detroit committee — and then got traded to Houston, where he's the lead back. So you're betting that a bigger role reverses an age-and-usage decline. That's a watch. The Muffed 2026 preview.
The 2025 season was a part-time line: a hundred fifty-eight carries for seven hundred sixteen yards, eight touchdowns, RB33 per game — the smallest share of a backfield where Woody Marks and Nick Chubb ate into the work. But the efficiency held up: plus one hundred twenty-five rushing yards over expected, eleventh among backs, facing stacked boxes on a third of his carries. He could still run; he just didn't get the volume. Seven games under ten points tell the committee story.
The arc is a clean decline: fourteen-eight, fifteen-eight, then nine-eight. The touchdowns that propped up his earlier seasons faded, and the committee shrank his touches. He's a career-year-seven back.
What the data says: the efficiency is genuinely still there — rank-eleven over expected isn't a washed back. What's gone is the volume and the touchdown rate. The question 2026 answers is whether a lead role restores the touches enough to matter, on legs that are seven years in.
The situation is the entire bet, per the reports: Houston traded for him and he enters as the number-one back, with Joe Mixon — who missed all of 2025 — expected to be released, though Woody Marks followed from the prior committee. An efficient back with a real lead role is a genuine value; an aging back inheriting a new offense's question marks is a real risk. Both are true.
The price: pick forty-nine and a half, the twentieth back. Verdict: WATCHLIST — the efficiency and the new lead role argue up, the age and the 2025 collapse argue down, and the Houston backfield isn't fully settled. The counter for him: proven efficiency plus a feature role at RB20 is how value is found. Against: year-seven backs coming off a down year don't always get the volume back, and Marks is still there.
September watch: the carry share in Houston — lead role or committee redux; and the touchdown rate, where eight on part-time work could climb with volume. Your guys, every week. Next preview's queued.
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2025: 716 rushing yards on 158 carries, 8 rushing TDs; 24 catches for 192 yards, 0 receiving TDs on 29 targets (17 games)
More episodes
2025 ReviewMay 11, 2026David Montgomery 2025 Season in Review
RB27 on the season — 17 games, 9.8 PPR/game
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David Montgomery 2025 Season in Review
RB27 on the season — 17 games, 9.8 PPR/game
Show notes & transcript
David Montgomery finished the 2025 season as the number 27 running back in total PPR scoring and the number 33 running back in points per game. That gap tells you the shape of the year — 17 games played, but a three-way Houston backfield that never settled on a lead. Woody Marks actually out-touched him on the ground with 196 carries. Nick Chubb chipped in another 122. Montgomery's 158 carries were the smallest slice of a committee that never crowned a true lead back. He was efficient when he ran — he just didn't run enough, and every Texans red-zone trip felt like a coin flip.
Now let's dig into the numbers. Montgomery averaged 9.8 PPR per game on 158 carries for 716 yards and 8 rushing touchdowns, plus 24 catches for 192 yards on a five percent target share — replacement-level pass-game work for a starting back. The efficiency was genuinely good: plus 125.5 rushing yards over expected, plus 0.8 per attempt, 11th among qualified backs, and he did it while seeing eight or more defenders in the box on 34 percent of his carries. The per-touch work was there. Volume and consistency weren't — this was boom-or-bust in miniature. A 29.4-point explosion against the Jaguars in Week 3, an 18.2 in the Baltimore blowout, but seven games under 10 PPR and three games under 2 points. Weeks 4, 16, and 18: 1.2, 1.4, and 6.5. No floor — just a touchdown-dependent scoring pattern in an offense that converted only 50.7 percent of red-zone trips into touchdowns, second-worst in the league. Houston's run game as a whole posted minus 44.9 rushing expected points added, 30th in football. Even with Montgomery running above expectation, the unit around him was dragging him down.
The identity of Montgomery's season lives in that touchdown share. Eight scores tied him for 15th in the league in rushing touchdowns despite the part-time workload — he was the guy Houston trusted near the goal line when they got there. The catch: they didn't get there enough, and when they did, they kicked field goals more than any team in football. That's the Montgomery 2025 portrait — a back running above his blocking, finishing drives at a starter's clip, stuck in a committee on a team that turned touchdowns into three-pointers.
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