Lions' David Montgomery Talks Viral MNF Play, NFC North Race & More in B/R Interview

Want to know what it's like to be teammates with David Montgomery?

Just talk to him about his incredible play during his team's victory over the Seattle Seahawks in Week 4's Monday Night Football showdown.

While the Detroit Lions running back wowed the national audience by bouncing off multiple tacklers as a receiver and running over seemingly everyone from the greater Seattle area during one of the most physical plays of the season, he just wanted to focus on the efforts from his offensive line.

"It was a cool play," Montgomery told Bleacher Report. "What made that play such a special play wasn't me by any means. I think people get that misconstrued. Did you see Taylor Decker on that play? Did you see Penei Sewell on that play? That play is not that play without those guys.

"Me catching the ball and doing whatever I did was cool, but to see those guys sacrifice themselves just for a play and for me is what made it so beautiful. I get it from everybody else's perspective. But for me and where I'm standing, that play isn't that play without those guys."

Those guys have helped Montgomery thrive since signing with the Lions ahead of the 2023 campaign after spending his first four seasons with the Chicago Bears.

Not only did he win the NFC North for the first time in his career during his initial year with Detroit, he also ran for 1,015 yards and a personal-best 13 touchdowns. It was the second time in his career he surpassed 1,000 rushing yards in a season and the first time he ran for double-digit touchdowns.

Montgomery's physical style of running works perfectly alongside Jahmyr Gibbs as something of a thunder-and-lightning one-two punch in the backfield, and opposing defenses can only focus on slowing them down so much because they have to worry about Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams and Sam LaPorta in the passing game.

It is the perfect recipe for another 1,000-yard season in 2024, but, in typical form, the veteran running back isn't worried about his own numbers.

"If it happens it happens, if it doesn't it doesn't," he said. "If it means we win the whole enchilada and I don't? Oh, I'm for that. I don't really care about the accolades. I just want to win."

Detroit nearly won the "whole enchilada" last season before losing to the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game despite building a 24-7 halftime lead. The 49ers came storming back and escaped with a 34-31 victory, preventing the Lions from reaching their first Super Bowl in franchise history.

Still, the 2023 campaign was filled with milestones for Montgomery and Co.

Detroit won a division title for the first time since the 1993 season. It built on that accomplishment by winning a playoff game for the first time since the 1991 season with a 24-23 victory over Matthew Stafford and the Los Angeles Rams in front of a raucous home crowd.

From there, the Lions defeated the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Divisional Round and surely had their fans dreaming of the Lombardi Trophy.

While they fell just short, the majority of the impact players are back this season. What's more, they have the additional motivation of coming so close to reaching the sport's biggest stage.

"It's definitely highly motivating," Montgomery said of bouncing back from last season's end. "We've got some rare guys in that building. I call it the land of misfit toys. You go to a place that's a gritty, blue-collared place and everybody's not always accepting of that. We don't have the fastest humans in the world.

"We do have some special, rare guys who are going super fast, but we've got some gritty guys too who sacrifice themselves for everybody else. You get that all together and a group of people who believe in one another like that, and you get something special. We've got a team full of football players, we don't have a team full of combine guys."

Montgomery is taking that team-first approach into his newest partnership with Scouting America, which is a familiar organization for him considering he was a Boy Scout who worked his way up to Eagle Scout status when he was young.

"This is an opportunity I couldn't pass up on," he said. "I think scouting for me is a foundational thing. It created a foundation for me to hold myself to a standard of great morality and an understanding that I needed to live this way for the entirety of my life. Those are the expectations I have for myself. Scouting did that for me.

"I want all the kids to know and all their parents to know that being a Scout is cool. You can learn a lot of things, and you can benefit if you just jump into it. Go learn it and experience it for yourself. Don't allow anybody else to give you a perception. You go create that perception for yourself."

Montgomery worked his way up to Eagle Scout status while he was a high school football player in Cincinnati, Ohio. Part of his work included hosting post-Friday Night Lights toiletry drives that supported the unhoused community.

He believes those experiences helped shape him both on and off the field.

"Football and scouting are two different worlds, but I think when you put it all together it's so beautiful," he said. "Me being able to transition from being a scout into a football player and bring it all together is what makes it so unique. Being able to have that leadership role of being a senior patrol leader in my troop to being a quarterback on my high school team, I was able to take things from both scenarios and merge them to make something great.

"For me I was able to find that happy medium between both of them and understood that I could benefit from both of them at the same time. It helped shape me. Just being more thoughtful and more thorough with myself when I do make decisions on how it can impact me and how it can impact the people who care about me."

That journey through life and football eventually guided him to the Lions and a team that is looking to win a second straight NFC North title.

But it won't be easy, as it is the only division in the NFL where every team is above .500. The Minnesota Vikings are 5-0, and there is plenty of optimism for the 3-2 Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers with young quarterbacks in Caleb Williams and Jordan Love.

While the 3-1 Lions are chasing Minnesota in the early going, they came into the season as the team everyone else was trying to catch.

After all, they brought back their entire core from a team that was a half away from the Super Bowl and lifted the division crown just a season ago. Yet Montgomery isn't falling into the trap of believing the division is Detroit's to lose.

"We don't look at it that way," he said. "We don't look at it like everybody is chasing us. We look at it like we're chasing everybody else. As long as everybody else thinks that we're the ones to be chased, that's cool. But us in the building? We're trying to get everybody."

The ultimate chase is the one for the Lombardi Trophy, and Montgomery and Co. won't rest until they finish it.