2021 David Montgomery Fantasy Football Player Profile

It’s that time of year once again! Football Absurdity will bring you a breakdown of every notable fantasy football-relevant player throughout June, July, and August. We finished our quarterbacks already; that means it’s time to get to the most frustrating position! That’s right, we’re on to the running backs. Today we take a look at a third-year back who had his breakout last season, but who dropped in the ranks for some reason. Will 2021 David Montgomery continue his breakout campaign from 2020?

David Montgomery ADP & AAV:

Average Draft Position (HPPR): RB21, Pick 38
Average Auction Value: $17.8 (RB20)

David Montgomery Statistics:

2021 David Montgomery Fantasy Football Overview:

David Montgomery broke out last season, finishing the year averaging over 100 yards from scrimmage per game, and kicking in 10 touchdowns in 15 games. This is all fantastic, and the big jump in production came from not just a rushing efficiency increase, but also from his targets nearly doubling (35 to 68) in 2020. Some are pausing when looking at 2021 David Montgomery because Tarik Cohen will return from his ACL tear, and fears that Cohen will take significant work from Montgomery abound. But here’s the thing: David Montgomery is a better pass-catching back than Tarik Cohen, at this point.

Last season, Montgomery boasted a catch rate of 79.4% and a yards per reception north of 8. Cohen has a yard per reception below seven in three of his four seasons, and the highest catch rate of his career was 78%. Montgomery catches footballs at a higher rate, and also goes further with his catches. At this point, I’m not worried about Cohen taking much of anything from Montgomery.

2021 David Montgomery Fantasy Football Draft Strategy:

David Montgomery Auction Value: $25
Draft Ranking: Find out for your league settings in a Beersheet!

David Montgomery was a top-eight running back in fantasy points per game last season, and is going as RB20. Even if you think that Montgomery will regress a bit from a touchdown standpoint, or from a Tarik Cohen standpoint, you can’t ignore the value. I also acknowledge that Montgomery finished his year strong against some awful competition, which boosted his year-end production numbers. But everyone gets bad teams on their docket, and Montgomery just had his in a row. This isn’t a reason to downgrade David Montgomery, unless you are really searching for one. We love to look for clusters and luck as a reason to downgrade someone, but in reality, he just clustered all his bad games together. Would we feel better about Montgomery if those six games were spread throughout the rest of the season? Are we just ascribing meaning to them because they were in a row?

Are we just inventing reasons to not like David Montgomery? Go draft him at his draft price and let your leaguemates smack their foreheads and go “how did we let that happen?!”

Best Case Scenario:

David Montgomery continues his hot run from 2020, and returns top-five value for his fantasy football managers.

Worst Case Scenario:

David Montgomery just gets some value and still returns top-20 value. You get a solid RB2 in the third or fourth round.

Check out all our 2021 player profiles, here.

Want more 2021 fantasy football draft discussion? Check out these links!

Discord!
Podcast!
Patreon!
Twitch!

[Statistics are sourced from pro-football-reference.com, airyards.com, and ftnfantasy.com]

[Image Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/David_Montgomery_in_2019.jpg, cropped under CC BY SA 2.0]