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DETROIT — David Montgomery has the dream often. His eyes will close. His mind will drift. When he’s sound asleep, he’s taken to a place unbeknownst to him and the city he resides in. It’s new and exciting. The type of dream that leaves you wanting more when it ends.
His team, and this Detroit Lions franchise, playing for a Super Bowl.
“The closer we get,” Montgomery said, “the more vivid they become.”
The dreams Montgomery often has are shared over at 222 Republic Drive. From 3-13-1 to 9-8 to 12-5, the Detroit Lions had seen incremental growth each year. Adding Montgomery to the mix was like pouring gasoline onto a fire. He’s a tone-setter. The living, breathing embodiment of the four-letter word Campbell so often preaches — Grit.
When this team strays away from its identity or wants to remind an opponent how the Lions play football, they turn to Montgomery. Every time.
“On a day-to-day basis, he’s just one of those guys you just can’t replace,” said All-Pro tackle Penei Sewell. “He’s been one of those rocks for us and he’s been one of those pillars that Coach Campbell talks about. You could just see it out there on Sundays when he plays, what he means for us.”
Montgomery is a core member of arguably the league’s best team. This group, unlike many before it, has an established identity because of players like him. There was a vision when this team was assembled. The players and coaches were brought in or kept here because of the intangibles that bind them and ignite them.
They love the game and love to compete. They took their lumps and grew up together. They learned how to win together. And they do it for the guy next to them. Their run to the 2024 NFC Championship told them where they were and where they were going.
It’s why players and coaches spent the offseason openly discussing their Super Bowl aspirations. Campbell told reporters before the season that he wants “the whole enchilada.” Montgomery prefers to call it “the big cookie.”
Why?
“It’s so much sweeter,” he said.
The Lions have earned the right to dream big. They won a franchise-record 15 games this season. They accomplished all of their regular-season goals. They are two wins away from reaching the organization’s first Super Bowl, and three away from winning it all. They are not here by accident.
But for a while, Montgomery’s dreams became hazy. The belief was that, if the Lions were to make them a reality, they’d need to do so without him.
It was Week 15, and the Detroit Lions had just lost to Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills at home, 48-42. The injury report that followed was brutal for a team already decimated by injury. Star defensive tackle Alim McNeill? Torn ACL. No. 1 cornerback Carlton Davis III? Fractured jaw. Ace special-teamer Khalil Dorsey? A gruesome ankle injury. All lost for the season.
But Detroit was coming off a 42-point outing in a losing effort. So long as the offense was intact, the Lions would have a chance in every game — postseason included. It’s the strength of their team and has been for years now.
Then came the news. One final blow. Montgomery suffered an MCL injury. His season was thought to be over.
“Looks like he’s going to require surgery that’ll put him out through the rest of the year,” Campbell said a day after the loss to the Bills. “I mean, David’s so tough, man, he continued to play through and then got it checked out today and realized that’s what it was. I mean, he’s just the ultimate teammate, ultimate competitor. We’re going to miss him, man. He’s another one of these guys that got us to this position, helped get us to where we’re at. … The rest of us, we owe him to keep going and make sure that wasn’t in vain.”
Montgomery isn’t part of the conversation when discussing the league’s top backs. He’s never made a Pro Bowl. The team that drafted him didn’t believe he was worth the price it would take to keep him around. He plays a position that is often overlooked. Then ended up joining a franchise that was, too.
Detroit and Montgomery were the perfect pairing, at the perfect time. The Lions were a team on the rise — a trendy pick to win their first division title in 30 years. Coaches in Detroit had gotten a close look at Montgomery, playing him and his former team, the Chicago Bears, twice a year in the NFC North. Campbell, a coach who spent years watching Alvin Kamara and Mark Ingram form the league’s best running back tandem, wanted to recreate that in Detroit. He and general manager Brad Holmes saw Montgomery as a tone-setter and upgrade for their run game and what it would eventually become.
Since signing a three-year deal in March 2023, Montgomery has been everything the Lions could’ve asked for and more. So much so that they extended his contract just a year and a half in — a rarity for a running back in today’s game. But it makes sense to anyone who’s watched this team.
He’s an ambassador for this city, this franchise and everything it now stands for.
“I call this place the land of the misfit toys,” Montgomery said last season. “You got a lot of guys that been told no they whole life, or been told they’ve never been good enough. You got a beautiful city like this who’ve been gritty, blue-collar people. People look at this city, for a while, as not taken serious. And now, we’re beginning to be serious. The city of Detroit is behind us and you can feel it, you know? “We’ve got a bunch of guys in this locker, coaches, who are high-character guys, gritty guys. You see what it’s like when, for a long time, you got beat down. The tide begins to change.”
“He’s somebody that we want here long term,” Campbell said in October. “We just wanted to make it happen. And we’re fortunate that both sides wanted the same thing. …We didn’t see ourselves a year or two from now not having “5” with us. We just didn’t see it. It didn’t make sense. He’s too much like us. He’s too much a part of us. He’s everything we’re looking for, and we’re not going to just let that guy leave. I’m glad he’s here to stay.”
The value of a running back like Montgomery stretches beyond the numbers — though, those are pretty good, too. Since joining the Lions, Montgomery has rushed for the sixth most touchdowns in the league with 25 — virtually automatic in goal-to-go situations. Over the last two seasons, Montgomery has the third-highest rushing success rate in the league among running backs at 44.6 percent (min. 200 rushes), per TruMedia. He was a good back in Chicago, but he’s elevated his game in Detroit, running behind a respected offensive line.
But it isn’t a one-way street. Montgomery lifts Detroit’s rushing attack as much as the guys around him lift him. You see it in his playing style. His teammates are often left speechless watching Montgomery deliver violent hits like it’s nothing. It can be demoralizing for an opposing defense, thinking it has a guy bottled up for a loss, only to see stars moments later when he lowers his shoulder and keeps running.
If you played this sport at any age, at any level, you’ve probably played against a kid who was different. A kid nobody wanted to tackle because he would expose the talent gap between you or leave you hurting a day later.
Montgomery is one of those guys. For grown men in the NFL.
“Training camp, I went against him one-on-one,” Lions linebacker Jack Campbell said Wednesday, shaking his head recalling the moment. “S–t was tough, that’s all I’m gonna say. I mean, I feel like people don’t give him enough credit because he can beat you with speed and his one-cut ability is nuts, and then he can also run you over. When you got a guy like that, you gotta pick your poison. … It energizes the sideline and just shows everyone just how much you’re putting out there for your team. I feel like everyone feels that energy and I feel like that’s what he brings.”
“I feel like it make them scared,” Jameson Williams said of Montgomery’s impact. “Nobody wanna get hit. Nobody wanna get hit — offense or defense, it don’t matter. And when he come through laying that down, they get scared. They don’t want to meet him in that hole no more. They don’t want to keep doing that for 60 minutes. But I know he do.”
The day after Detroit’s loss to the Bills, as the team attempted to pick up the pieces, Lions running backs coach Scottie Montgomery took a detour on his way home from the team facility after work. He drove to Montgomery’s house to check on his workhorse. He assumed he could use some positive energy, given the prognosis and what he thought was a season lost.
But when the door opened, Montgomery was on the other side, smiling from ear to ear. He was already in good spirits. He had family in town. He showed his position coach the Christmas lights around his house. They discussed the Bills game but not the injury. Situational football, protections, typical day-after conversations.
It wasn’t gloom-and-doom. You wouldn’t have known his season was likely over. And by the end of their time together, it was the player offering his coach some much-needed uplifting.
All along, Montgomery was plotting his return.
“When I walked out, I felt so much better because he pumped me up,” Scottie Montgomery said later that week. “He gave me the juice. … And if anybody can come back (from) it — you guys have seen who he is — this is the guy that can definitely come back from it.”
The first hint of a possible return came via roster management. The Lions never placed Montgomery on injured reserve, like they had with several of his teammates. He was nowhere to be found during practices and wouldn’t be for some time, which added to the confusion. Why not make the move?
However, it was later revealed by Campbell that Montgomery sought a second, then a third opinion on the status of his MCL injury. The news was good enough for Campbell and the team to avoid placing him on IR and see where things went. And so, Montgomery went to work.
His recovery was less about rest and more about activity. The more he could get the scar tissue to grow back, the better off he’d be. It required strengthening. That was the plan of attack when he began his rehab. He conducted strenuous, targeted exercises, all in an effort to get back to his brothers as soon as possible.
“It was just, like, lock in,” Montgomery said of his mentality during his time away. “Kind of put the horse blinders on and silence the noise of the world and just kind of attack it every day, no matter what the day looks like. As long as I get the opportunity to wake up every day, no matter how the day before it looked, I got a chance.”
Meanwhile, the team picked itself back up. Wins over the Bears and 49ers without Montgomery put them on track for a first-round bye, setting up a winner-take-all finale vs. the Minnesota Vikings in Week 18. In that game, it was Montgomery’s running mate, Jahmyr Gibbs, who paved the way for Detroit’s desired result. He totaled 170 scrimmage yards and a career-high four touchdowns, en route to a 31-9 win, a second consecutive division title and the NFC’s No. 1 seed.
Montgomery was on the sideline in team gear during that game. He was in the locker room after it, celebrating one of their best wins. Perhaps the shining example of Montgomery’s value to this locker room was the fact that, amid that celebration, players went out of their way to mention the added benefit of that night’s win — giving Montgomery more time to make his return.
If you find yourself asking how this team is still here — despite all the injuries, the lack of continuity, the chaos that would cause other teams to crumble — look no further than that.
That’s what this team does. They’re there for one another. They pick each other up. They allow each other to continue dreaming.
“You can’t replace guys like that who are an embodiment of our culture,” lineman Kayode Awosika said. “… When someone’s down, we’ll pick it up. We’ll find a way.”
The idea of getting to a Super Bowl without their bell cow, their catalyst, their tone-setter is one the Lions are happy they no longer have to worry about. Montgomery is back. He’s off the injury report. He’s re-joining the team just in time for its playoff debut, and what the Lions hope will be a run that ends with a dream realized.
“I don’t know how it’s gonna look getting there,” Montgomery said of a Super Bowl appearance, “But I know we gon’ be there.”
With Montgomery back, the dream is vivid.
(Top photo: Nic Antaya / Getty Images)
