Fantasy football players who have Detroit Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs on their roster likely owe fellow Lions RB David Montgomery a thank you.
After all, it was Montgomery who conceded a scoring opportunity of his own for the sake of Gibbs, which allowed the rookie RB to score the first of his two touchdowns in Sunday’s 41-38 win over the Los Angeles Chargers.
“I was supposed to come out, then David came out, got me, and was like ‘Jah, do you want [the touchdown]?’” Gibbs recently told The 33rd Team. “I was thinking, ‘Yeah, yeah let me get it.’ He just ran out and let me (score), so props to big bro.”
Montgomery’s selflessness not only let Gibbs finish off a drive in which he ran for 51 yards on the previous three plays to get Detroit to the goal line, it also extended his streak of consecutive games with a touchdown to three.
The 26-year-old tailback was rewarded later in the half when he took a first-and-10 handoff from Detroit’s 25-yard-line and raced 75 yards to the end zone for his team-leading seventh touchdown of the season.
Montgomery finished with 116 yards on 12 carries in his first game back after missing two contests with a rib injury. It was also his third 100-yard game of the year. Meanwhile, Gibbs finished with 77 yards rushing and two touchdowns on 14 carries, and he added three receptions on five targets for 35 yards.
With Montgomery getting the lion’s share of the carries for the first four games of the year, Gibbs has really come on strong and the workload has evened out. Montgomery leads Gibbs in carries (106 to 90), yards (501 to 476) , touchdowns (seven to four) and yards after contact (360 to 300). Gibbs holds the edge in yards per carry (5.3 to 4.7), runs of 10 yards or more (13 to eight), receptions (31 to six) and receiving yards (200 to 66).