On the first play of the Lions' second touchdown drive against the Chiefs last Sunday, David Montgomery caught a pass in the flat and burst up field for 23 yards. He turned another short pass into 14 yards a few plays later. Those were his only two touches of the second half in the Lions' 30-17 loss.
Montgomery rushed four times for 24 yards in the first half, 22 of which came on three carries on the Lions' first touchdown drive. He did not get a second-half carry. This wasn't by design, but rather, the result of a game script that forced the Lions to pass. They trailed by two scores for most of the final two quarters.
Still, on a night that the Lions found 17 carries for Gibbs, they found just four for the other half of their two-headed monster in the backfield -- the fewest of Montgomery's three-year tenure in Detroit. It was an extreme example of an early-season trend: Sonic is getting more work than Knuckles.
"We certainly don’t want either one of them getting too much," Dan Campbell said Tuesday. "But I know that it’s a little more tilted towards Jah right now. A lot of that comes in the two-minute reps that we get."
The Lions only had a handful of snaps in their two-minute offense against the Chiefs, but Gibbs is "normally in on that, and that can skew" the division of work, said Campbell. "But I don’t feel like we’ve gotten Jah too much in a game yet necessarily."
Gibbs and Montgomery were every bit of a tandem last year. Before he missed the final three games of the season with a knee injury, Montgomery had 185 carries and 36 catches, while Gibbs had 186 carries and 39 catches.
Through six games this year, Montgomery has 65 carries and nine catches, compared to 87 carries and 23 catches for Gibbs. Montgomery has actually been the more efficient of the two on the ground, with 5.1 yards per carry to Gibbs' 4.5. But Gibbs is the more dangerous player. He puts inherent stress on a defense that Montgomery does not.
That's not to diminish Montgomery, who's quicker than he gets credit for and makes a defense pay for every tackle. In terms of snap count, Montgomery has averaged about 23 per game, Gibbs about 38. Campbell said he feels "pretty good" about the workload so far for Gibbs, "but I would like to balance them out, I would."
"I would like to give David some more, find a place to get him a few more," he said. "We were hoping we were going to be able to do that in the second half some more the other day, and it’s just kind of where the game went. We didn’t convert on a couple of those series. We get in fourth-and-10s and that took away some of the runs and play-passes, and then we were in a different type of game at that point."
Montgomery got a season-high 18 carries in the Lions' win over the Bengals two weeks ago in his Cincinnati homecoming, compared to 12 for Gibbs. At this time last week, most of the angst about touches in Detroit's offense surrounded Jameson Williams, who had seven total catches in the prior four games. He responded with six catches for 66 yards and a touchdown against the Chiefs.
It wouldn't be a surprise to see Montgomery make a similar impact next Monday against the Bucs, even against a run defense that ranks fifth in the NFL. The Lions will likely want to get him involved early and often.
"For us in particular, our skill players are so dang good it is a challenge to try to get everyone involved," Jared Goff said Wednesday. "That is something that I don’t necessarily need to be aware of, but I know the coaches are constantly aware of, to make sure everyone’s touching it and being multiple and getting the ball into everyone’s hands and changing formations. That whole thing is a challenge.
"That’s a good challenge to have, though. You want to have those challenges and I think our coaches do a good job with that."