NFL Winners and Losers: Aaron Rodgers getting help from a very unlikely running back
When Aaron Rodgers said he thought the Green Bay Packers could run the table and make the playoffs, everyone knew it was on Rodgers’ shoulders to make it happen. If he played like vintage Rodgers, it wasn’t impossible.
What seemed impossible was Ty Montgomery – a receiver as of a couple months ago – emerging as Green Bay’s best running back alongside Rodgers on the way to the playoffs.
Montgomery put the Packers in position to win on Sunday and Rodgers brought them home. Montgomery had 162 rushing yards, the most for any player in the NFL on Sunday, and two rushing touchdowns. And Rodgers’ enormous 60-yard pass to Jordy Nelson with less than 30 seconds left set up the game-winning field goal in a 30-27 win over the Chicago Bears, and might have won Rodgers another MVP award. With the Packers’ win and the Detroit Lions’ loss, the Packers will win the NFC North if they beat the Minnesota Vikings next week and the Lions in Week 17. It’s an amazing turnaround from 4-6.
Rodgers driving the bus toward what looks now like a Week 17 showdown for the NFC North title isn’t too surprising. He’s a two-time MVP and future Hall of Famer. The Montgomery part of the story is way more unbelievable.
There’s no decent comparison for what Montgomery is doing. Montgomery spent his first year-plus as a receiver. Earlier this season, when all the Packers’ running backs were hurt, he was forced to play the position. We’ve heard of players moving from receiver to running back during college. Ricky Watters is a good example of that. Some have moved from running back to receiver during their NFL career, most notably Hall of Famers Elroy Hirsch and Charley Taylor. Or back in the pre-Super Bowl era, players like Frank Gifford and Lenny Moore, did a little bit of everything and could be considered receivers or running backs. But it’s hard to find someone in the post-merger era who started their NFL career at receiver, played there a while, then moved to running back and had success.
Montgomery is a unique case. He came out of Stanford as a versatile receiver who could run the ball on occasion, like Percy Harvin before him. But Montgomery has made a permanent position change and done well (those who had Montgomery as a receiver in Yahoo’s fantasy football and saw him gain running back eligibility during the season are smiling and nodding).
Admittedly, it still looks weird to see a No. 88 getting handoffs and running between the tackles. Montgomery told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he’d change numbers, but the NFL won’t allow it during the season. No big deal. The Bears saw a lot of the back of that No. 88 jersey Sunday.
Other than the jersey number, Montgomery looks the part. He has the size and speed for the position. He showed patience, vision, shiftiness and burst on some nice runs against the Bears. Montgomery got the start because James Starks was inactive, and the Packers got an enormous performance from him.
It’s almost impossible to believe a receiver could shift to running back during a season and help save a team’s offense and lift it to the playoffs, but it appears that’s what we’re seeing with Montgomery. Packers coach Mike McCarthy explicitly said Monday that Montgomery was a running back now. After how well he played on Sunday, there’s no reason to believe he’s ever moving back to receiver.
Here are the rest of the winners and losers from Week 15 of the NFL season:
WINNERS
Tom Savage: The story out of Houston will focus on Brock Osweiler, the Texans’ $18 million-a-year quarterback, being benched and what happens with him next. But the other side of that lineup change is interesting too, because the Texans might have found something at quarterback.
Savage, a fourth-round pick in 2014, had 19 career passes before Sunday. When the Texans finally decided they had seen enough of Osweiler after his second interception, Savage was pretty good. He was 23 of 36 for 260 yards and helped the Texans come back and beat the Jacksonville Jaguars 21-20. Savage’s total of 260 might not sound like much, but it came in about 2½ quarters. Osweiler has reached 260 yards just twice this season: 268 yards against the Chiefs and 269 yards against the Colts.
Savage might never have another day in the NFL as good as Sunday, but he came up big when Houston desperately needed it. Texans coach Bill O’Brien wouldn’t say who next week’s starter will be, but it will be of no surprise when he announces it’s Savage.
“We don’t make decisions on how much a guy gets paid,” O’Brien said in his postgame news conference. “We make decisions on what’s the best way to win a game.”
When the Texans signed Osweiler, they didn’t figure they’d be benching him for Savage and his $600,000 base salary. But now that’s happened, we can see Savage gives Houston its best chance to win the AFC South.
New England Patriots: It’s possible no team will ever replicate the run the Patriots are on.
The Patriots clinched the AFC East on Sunday with a 16-3 win over the defending champion Denver Broncos. It’s their eighth division championship in a row, an NFL record. They have won 13 of 14 division titles, and it might be 14 in a row had Tom Brady not torn his ACL in the 2008 season opener. The Patriots also clinched a first-round bye for the seventh straight season, which is mind-boggling.
More than just clinching the division and a bye in Week 15, the Patriots are playing really well. The Broncos were in a desperate situation if they want to make it back to the playoffs, and the Patriots dismissed them with relative ease. New England has lost two games all season. One was with third-string quarterback Jacoby Brissett, a rookie playing with an injured thumb that would require surgery less than a week later. The other loss came to the Seattle Seahawks when the Patriots couldn’t punch it in the end zone from the 1-yard line on the final play.
The road to the AFC title goes through New England if the Patriots win out. The way they have played since Brady’s return, that is a really tough challenge for the rest of the AFC.
Steve Spagnuolo: Spagnuolo has had an odd career. He gained acclaim for leading the 2007 New York Giants’ championship defense. Then he went off to coach the St. Louis Rams, went 10-38 with them, then in his next two seasons as a defensive coordinator (2012 New Orleans Saints, 2015 New York Giants) his units finished 32nd in the NFL in yards allowed each time.
Spagnuolo is back in the spotlight for a good reason.
New York’s defense has become one of the best in the NFL. On Sunday, it shut down Matthew Stafford and the Detroit Lions, giving up just a pair of field goals in a 17-6 win. The Giants lost defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul a couple weeks ago and it hasn’t mattered. They shut down the Cowboys last week, giving up just seven points, and followed that up with a strong performance Sunday.
Spagnuolo is doing a fine job putting his players in the right places and being aggressive with the scheme. It’s working. The defense is the main reason everyone is wondering if the Giants are the big sleeper in the NFC.
LOSERS
Detroit Lions: When the Lions beat the Minnesota Vikings on Thanksgiving, an NFC North title seemed practically inevitable. They had the tiebreaker over the Vikings. The Packers were a mess. Something crazy needed to happen for the Lions to not win their first division title since taking the NFC Central in 1993.
Something crazy might be happening.
The Lions did not look good in a 17-6 loss at the New York Giants. And there’s nothing wrong with losing on the road to a Giants team that is getting hot at the right time, especially after winning five in a row. But the Packers’ sudden surge has put a lot of pressure on the Lions. Now the Lions are looking at having to win Week 17 to take home that division title.
The Lions could do it, since the game will be in Detroit. But the Lions and their fans can’t feel too great, given the team’s history. It’s hard to believe Detroit could end up missing the playoffs altogether, though that’s not out of the question either. It’s probably going to come down to having to beat Green Bay in Week 17, in a game that looks like an easy candidate to be flexed to “Sunday Night Football.” That night should be exciting and utterly ulcer-inducing for the people of Detroit.
Adrian Peterson: Peterson rushed back for this?
The Minnesota Vikings star running back didn’t really stand out one way or another in his return from surgery on a torn meniscus. He had 22 yards on six carries. But he got to see firsthand what a mess the Vikings have made of their season.
The Vikings have gone from 5-0 to 7-7. The worst might have been Sunday, getting blown out at home 34-6 by a mediocre-at-best Indianapolis Colts team. On top of it, they gave away their 2017 first-round pick and a 2018 fourth-round pick to Philadelphia for perennially disappointing quarterback Sam Bradford right before the season started. That won’t help them compete for a title in the future. It should have been clear Bradford wouldn’t help them compete for a title this year, either.
The Vikings aren’t eliminated from the playoff race, but it doesn’t look good. Surely Peterson and the Vikings had fantasies of the running back returning and carrying the team to the playoffs late in the year, like he did in his 2012 MVP season. That probably won’t happen. And of course, there’s no guarantee Peterson will be back with the Vikings next season, given that he’ll be 32 with a $11.75 million base salary next season. Any hopes that Peterson’s return would spark a storybook ending faded fast on Sunday.
Mark Ingram: Television cameras catch everything in the NFL, so the New Orleans Saints running back should have known his sideline tirade would be captured.
Ingram was found yelling on the sideline during a 48-41 Saints win after being pulled for Tim Hightower near the goal line. He and coach Sean Payton had words before Ingram calmed down a bit.
“I’m real competitive in everything I do,” Ingram told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “I got to be smarter, I got to control my emotions better, but we had a great win as a team and that’s our No. 1 goal. And that’s what I’m happy for, that we’re bringing a win back to New Orleans.”
Athletes are competitive and sometimes it comes out in regrettable ways, which seems to be the case with Ingram. It doesn’t appear there was any contractual reason for Ingram’s outburst (all of Ingram’s reported bonuses and escalators are tied to rushing yards according to Spotrac, and OverTheCap.com doesn’t mention any touchdown bonuses). It’s just not a great look for Ingram – imagine how Hightower must have felt when he found out – for a player who doesn’t have a bad reputation. It’s too bad for him the TV cameras spotted it, as always.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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