Chicago Bears Fantasy Football: David Montgomery preview and outlook

Chicago Bears David Montgomery: Fantasy football outlook for 2021

The RB position can be unpredictable at times, even when the consensus views certain players as locks to finish high for fantasy football. The Panthers and Giants running backs seemed to be the consensus 2020 RB1 and RB2 in Christian McCaffrey and Saquan Barkley. However, both ended up missing almost the entire season.

There were rookies such as Jonathan Taylor (Colts) and James Robinson (Jaguars) finishing within the top 10 for the position, and even a duo on the same team from Cleveland finishing top-12 with Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt.

It was definitely an interesting year, and the competition for a top-12 finish for fantasy will be extremely high in 2021 with returns from injuries, rookies from 2020 progressing, incoming 2021 rookie RBs and potential surprises elsewhere. Bottom line here is that it is difficult to assume that since David Montgomery finished as a top-10 RB in 2020, that he will do the same in 2021.

David Montgomery’s current ADP (average draft position) for fantasy drafts is the RB16. The Fantasy Points site projects him to be the RB18, Fantasy Pros projects Montgomery to finish as the RB17 and ESPN projects him to finish as the RB17.

I believe for some sites they may be factoring in Tarik Cohen’s return to mean receptions significantly being taken away from Montgomery in 2021. There have been back and forth reports though from head coach Matt Nagy on the status of Cohen’s recovery from that ACL tear.

This leads me to predict that with both a.) Montgomery having a solid receiving year out of the backfield and b.) Cohen still potentially getting back to 100% that the receiving concerns should not be as high as they might be. I do not think you have a player perform well for a category and just strip him of those opportunities the next season either.

Fantasy managers should be comfortable with David Montgomery as their RB2. My suggestion for drafts would be to take a RB who has clear top 5-10 potential that is projected to be drafted in the first or second round of drafts and then take Montgomery later in your draft.

If this offense operates more efficiently due to upgraded quarterback play, this may mean less stacked boxes for Montgomery, potentially more passing work and being in field positions to set him up for more rushing touchdowns in 2021. There were 12 RBs with more rushing TDs, so if this specific category is improved upon this can mean some solid weeks for the third-year RB.

Taking David Montgomery as your RB2 with the potential to finish somewhere between RB12-15, although ranked outside of that range is a smart drafting decision. When weighing out RB’s, it is important to determine if a RB can perform higher than expectations (ADP), and I believe Montgomery is one of the backs due to continued passing work, opportunities continuing in Nagy’s offense and more efficiency which can lead to touchdowns.