Bears running back David Montgomery ran the ball at least 22 times in each of the Bears’ final three games of the 2020 regular season and head coach Matt Nagy would like to see Montgomery in that neighborhood on a weekly basis in the 2021 season.
Nagy isn’t just going to hand the ball to Montgomery over and over to ensure that happens, however. During an appearance on the Under Center podcast, Nagy noted that many backs get over 20 carries closing out leads late in games and that the Bears “want to have the lead so that we can give him the ball. . . . Because you know from just seeing him run the football, that guy in four-minute mode it takes more than one guy to bring him down. He’s one of my favorite players on the team.”
“Depending on what the game is, what’s happened the last couple years and why some of David’s carries -- which aren’t low -- haven’t been quite as high is a lot of guys get it in to four-minute mode in the fourth quarter,” Nagy said, via Gene Chamberlain of SI.com. “That’s where they can get those extra for or five carries, which can bump them into the top five, you know, with 20 rushes a game. That’s our goal.”
Montgomery was fourth in the NFL in carries while missing a game last season, so the Bears haven’t been shy about giving him the ball. To get him the ball in the kind of situations that Nagy wants, they’ll need to get more out of the other spots on the offense.