All offseason long we wondered if this would be the year that the Detroit Lions give Jahmyr Gibbs more playing time, which would obviously be bad news for David Montgomery.
After taking a look at the Week 1 snap counts courtesy of Pro Football Focus, it looks like that has a chance to happen.
PFF recorded a total of 44 snaps for Gibbs in loss to the Green Bay Packers, while Montgomery was listed with just 25.
Now, it’s certainly not abnormal for Montgomery to have that many, but usually the gap between the two Lions running backs is much closer when both are healthy.
While the snap distribution is no doubt interesting, there could be a very logical explanation for it.
The Lions were playing from behind against the Packers for the entire contest and Gibbs is always the better option when the Lions need to score fast points.
Green Bay took an early 7-0 lead and increased its lead to 17-3 going into the half. The Lions never got closer than 11 points after that and trailed 24-6 early in the fourth.
Montgomery didn’t register a single touch in Detroit’s last two drives, but he did get two carries on the Lions’ first drive of the final quarter.
What we saw in the first half might be more indicative of what to expect moving forward.
Gibbs and Montgomery played the same percentage of snaps over the first two quarters (52%), with Montgomery seeing eight carries in that span and Gibbs getting six.
Despite his limited opportunities, Montgomery still led the Lions in carries with 11, two more than what Gibbs had. Unfortunately neither back was able to do anything with those carries, as they combined for a putrid 44 yards.
There’s definitely reason for pause when looking at Detroit’s running back snap counts for Week 1, but we’ll get a better idea of where Montgomery stands when the Lions play in a closer game than the one they lost on Sunday.
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