“You saw where that game was won,” Montgomery says of the Seahawks’ inside push. “It helps the edge. Edges can be a little higher than normal.”
He certainly saw it on the other side, too, where the Patriots cleaned house. In 2024, Montgomery coached the New England defensive line in his only season in Foxboro. When the Patriots hired head coach Mike Vrabel, he left only tackle Christian Barmore and edge Anfernee Jennings for Super Sunday’s D-line. And Barmore played just 123 snaps in 2024. 3-14 became 14-3 with a big assist from the D-Line.
When the game ended with the Seattle defense’s historic championship game stand carrying the day and season, the NFL standings rolled back to 0-0, and the hunt for 2026 rosters officially began.
After a dozen years in the NFL, Montgomery proves it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been around player acquisitions. It’s never too late for an assistant coach to scout an all-star game, which is how he ended up in his first all-star game since playing in the 2002 Hula Bowl.
Despite his double-digit years in the league and family of five waiting for him to embrace the offseason, Montgomery jumped at the chance to spend a week in Frisco, Texas, at last month’s East-West All-Star Game.
“It’s easy to get some evaluations done, and it saves you some time on the back end,” Montgomery says. “When you work with these kids in person, you know what you’re getting. I think that’s better than any type of interview you can do.
“To be able to watch these kids practice, watch how they learn, see how they respond to coaching. See who loves football, see who doesn’t love football. That answers a lot of questions so there aren’t issues down the road. So you don’t know something that you should have known.”
The East-West game was filled primarily with last-day-of-the-draft players, but that’s OK. The Bengals drafted Geno Atkins, the NFL’s most productive defensive tackle of the previous decade with 75.5 sacks, in the 2010 fourth round.
“Can’t guess. You better know what you’re getting,” Montgomery says. “He has to have the right makeup, right mentality, and football has to be important for him.”