Dan Campbell likes to start at the end and work backward. It's a tactic he learned from Sean Payton during their time together in New Orleans. Before the Lions even hired him, Campbell "envisioned us being in downtown Detroit with a trophy and this city going crazy," he once said.
Last offseason, while he was working out in Arizona, David Montgomery started having visions of his own.
"I tell my brother all the time, I would have dreams about us going to the Super Bowl," Montgomery said Tuesday. "It’s crazy. And the closer we get, the more vivid they become. I have them often. But it ain’t gonna be easy. I don’t know how it’s going to look of us getting there, but I know we're gonna be there. It's just us going out and performing and being who we're capable of."
Asked if the Lions win, Montgomery said, "I’ma keep that to myself."
Montgomery's dream nearly died last month. It was the sweat he dripped last summer that kept it alive. When Montgomery and his trainer went back and watched the blow he took to his knee in the Lions' loss to the Bills that left him with a sprained MCL -- and a shot to return this season -- "there's no way, if you look at the hit the way it happened, that I didn't tear my ACL," he said.
"When people was laughing at me in the summer, like, 'Why's he dead-lifting 800 pounds? Why’s he doing all of this crazy stuff?' I’m like, this is a fierce, crazy game," said Montgomery. "There’s grown men hitting each other at full speed. If you’re not strong or your body can’t take it, you’re not gonna make it. I’m blessed and I’m lucky to be able to be standing right here to play right now, because if you look at the hit, it don’t look good. It’s real egregious."
Montgomery will make his return for the Lions in Saturday night's divisional round playoff game against the Commanders. He said that "it's refreshing to be back in a position where I can help the team." While the early outlook on his injury called for season-ending surgery, Montgomery never gave in to that idea. In fact, "I didn’t know that I was getting surgery until the media told me," he said. "So, it was news to me." News to them: Montgomery wasn't going to miss this.
"I’m always pretty confident in who I am and how I prepare," he said. "I know who my God is, too. It ain’t really too much of anything that I know that I can’t overcome when I know who is the head of my life. I'm where I'm supposed to be, because I'm supposed to be here."
Montgomery's rehab was arduous, the very opposite of rest and recovery. He spent the past several weeks restrengthening the muscles around his knee to build up the necessary scar tissue to get back on the field. That called for lots of strenuous -- and surely painful -- exercises, "but I needed it," Montgomery said.
"It feels good, great," he said. "Shoot, I think it feels better than it did before I got hurt."
Montgomery doesn't plan to take any precautions Saturday night, "or I shouldn't be out there." He won't be on a pitch count. The only limit to his workload would be -- and should be -- imposed by Jahmyr Gibbs, who proved in Montgomery's absence exactly what Montgomery said Tuesday: "Jah is special, a generational talent." In three games as the Lions' lead horse, Gibbs galloped for 487 yards and six touchdowns from scrimmage.
"I didn’t expect anything less from him," Montgomery said. "Jah is gonna roll and whatever he needs from me, I’m gonna make sure he has, but this is kinda his show."
Still, there's a role here for Montgomery. Dan Campbell has made that clear this week. For all of Gibbs' super-Sonic speed, he doesn't possess the same power as the man they call Knuckles. Very few running backs do. When the Lions need a yard or two Saturday night, they'll be lucky to have Montgomery waiting in the wings.
His teammates and coaches call him the tone-setter on offense. Montgomery appreciates that, but deflects the credit to "them boys up front. They’re really the engine to this locomotive." He runs the way he runs "because I know this game saved my life in a lot of ways, so it’s only my job to try to give back everything that I have to this game that’s taken me farther than I ever could have imagined." The Lions are two wins away from going farther than they've ever been. Only Montgomery knows what happens from there.
There's a photo of Montgomery after last year's NFC title game, on his hands and knees in the back of the end zone, his face buried in the grass. He looks broken by the Lions' collapse. He was not: "I was just thanking God for that moment. Win, lose or draw, being grateful for him bringing me where he has brought me." Asked if he ever goes back there in his mind, Montgomery said, "Nah, the past is the past. It’s over with, ain't nothing I can change."
He paused and added, "I know I can affect the future."