Amon-Ra St. Brown woke up Monday morning, scrolled X on his phone and saw a report from Adam Schefter that David Montgomery had been traded to the Texans.
"I said, 'No way.' So I texted him right away, "I said, I love you, bro. I’m excited for you and I’m gonna call you later,'" St. Brown said on the latest episode of the St. Brown Podcast.
Montgomery had already sent a text to the running backs group chat that includes St. Brown along with Jahmyr Gibbs, Sione Vaki and former Lions Craig Reynolds and Jermar Jefferson, and said, "It was a pleasure playing with you, boys."
"And then we all just reacted, we all just sent sad emojis and stuff," said St. Brown, who sat next to Montgomery in the Lions' team meeting room. "He’s one of the funniest guys on the team."
The Lions dealt Montgomery to Houston for a fourth-round pick, a future seventh-round pick and offensive lineman Juice Scruggs, granting him his wish to play for a team where he'd have a bigger role after he saw career lows last season in carries and touches.
"Selfishly I’m sick, because I love D-Mo," said St. Brown. "One of my favorite teammates. No matter what the situation was — we all knew that he wanted more carries and wanted to play more — he never made it about himself. He was always all about the team, which I know is hard sometimes. Especially in his position, he’s an RB1 on 31 other teams. He’s damn-near RB1 for us. But it’s like, you got two really good running backs, only one running back can play ... whereas at receiver you can have two or three on the field.
"Anyways, selfishly, like I said, I’m upset, but I’m also really happy for D-Mo because I know how much he wanted to have a bigger role in an offense and I think he’s going to get that in Houston. They got a crazy defense, they got receivers, they got a good quarterback, they got a good team, so I think he’s going to a good team where he’s going to be able to be the primary back and I think he’s going to make a lot of noise."
In fact, St. Brown shared a message for anyone who had Montgomery on their fantasy team last season and might have been disappointed by the results: "I told them, you better keep him, because he’s about to go even crazier."
The question now is what the Lions will do to fill the void. Montgomery didn't play a ton last season, but still had a valuable role as the complement to Gibbs. And the Lions don't have a running back on the roster with legitimate experience. The trio of Vaki, Jacob Saylors and Jabari Small have nine NFL carries combined, and Vaki, the most intriguing among them, was primarily a safety in college and has been frequently injured in Detroit.
"You lose one of your best backs, I don’t make the decisions but I would assume that you would try to replace him," said St. Brown. "I mean, you can’t replace D-Mo, but you try to get another back to fill his spot. I don't know if you draft a running back, I don't know if you get one in free agency, that’s a Brad Holmes question, that’s a higher-up question, but yes, I would assume that we would look for another running back.
"We have Vaki on the roster, too, but it can’t just be Jahmyr and Vaki. We need more than two backs. Those are our two main backs right now. We had Craig but he left midseason, and it was Jahmyr, D-Mo and Vaki, and now D-Mo’s gone. So, we do need a running back. We do need another running back."