Houston went and got David Montgomery, and the way the Texans are talking about him tells you more than the trade itself does. The word coming out of camp is dual-threat, and the stated hope is that he complements C.J. Stroud. That is not the language you use about a guy you drafted to grind out 22 carries. That is the language you use about a back you want on the field when the quarterback is throwing.
So the Houston Texans David Montgomery fit is really a question about third down and second-and-long. A back who can run a route and catch the checkdown gives Stroud somewhere to go when the first read is smothered. A back who can also stand up a blitzing linebacker gives him an extra half-second, which is the most valuable currency in football and the least celebrated. There was another story on the wire this same morning about Jaxson Dart getting leveled because a running back missed a block, and that is the whole argument in one ugly snapshot. Pass protection is a running back skill. Nobody puts it on a highlight package.
What I like here is that Houston appears to be solving for the quarterback rather than for the box score. Stroud has always been better with a clean pocket and a defined progression than with chaos, and the cheapest way to buy both is a veteran back who knows the protection rules and can turn a broken play into six yards instead of a sack.
from the almanac: the best version of this in houston was arian foster in 2010, when he led the league in rushing and still caught 66 passes out of the backfield. an undrafted kid doing two jobs at once. teams have been chasing that combination ever since.
The caution is simple. Camp talk about featuring somebody is cheap in August, and running back plans tend to survive exactly until the first time a defense loads the box. What I want to see is where Montgomery lines up on the snaps that matter: is he on the field in the obvious dropback packages, or does he come off for a specialist? That personnel choice will tell us whether Houston meant it.