Detroit Lions wide receivers coach\/assistant head coach Scottie Montgomery opened his Thursday press conference with an interesting statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cTremendous amount of respect (for) how we played\u2014the guys played\u2014without the football,\u201d Montgomery said, before praising Jahmyr Gibbs, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Kalif Raymond, and the entire offensive line for that work.<\/p>\n
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While it may be unconventional praise, it speaks to the character and identity of this team. The game of football is just as much about the 10 players without the football than it is the one who is carrying the rock.<\/p>\n
Montgomery pointed to two salient examples from the Lions\u2019 blowout win over the Chicago Bears, highlighting players away from the football doing the dirty work, helping to execute a pair of explosive plays.<\/p>\n
The first was Gibbs\u2019 42-yard run in the third quarter. Montgomery highlighted the work of Raymond, whose crash into the Bears safety was the key block that sprung Gibbs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very detailed play on the Jahmyr run down the right side,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cLeaf [Raymond] sealed the right safety and Jahmyr was exactly where he\u2019s supposed to be on the run. We wanted him to put pressure on the corner there to make the corner make the play. And because he had to trust in Leaf to get his job done, you can just watch that path, it didn\u2019t deviate.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Watch the play below:<\/p>\n
As you can see, Raymond essentially takes out two defenders. The play-side corner (#29, Tyrique Stevenson) follows him in man-coverage, while Raymond lays a solid block on Bears safety (#9) Jaquan Brisker. That leaves Gibbs to outrun just the backside safety, which he nearly does on his way to a 42-yard gain.<\/p>\n
Montgomery then pointed to Gibbs as a player who was also performing well away from the ball. The Lions running back makes a tremendous effort to get downfield and block during Jameson Williams\u2019 64-yard gain. Despite being behind Williams when he makes the catch, Gibbs nearly catches up to the speedy receiver and gets in the way of a couple of Bears defenders.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWatch Jahmyr Gibbs, and watch what he did on that play, playing with out the football,\u201d Montogmery said.<\/p>\n
Okay, let\u2019s take a look.<\/p>\n
When Williams catches the ball, Gibbs is nearly 15 yards behind him. But he shows tremendous effort, running basically from his own 20-yard line down to the Bears\u2019 10-yard line in the hopes of making a block to spring Williams into the end zone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you do that for your teammate at the running back position, he turns around and does it for you, the perimeter is going to take care of itself,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cThose are the things that make teams stronger and more connected.\u201d<\/p>\n
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When everyone is doing their job away from the ball, it certainly makes life easier for the ball-carrier. But it also helps to have the playmakers the Lions do to ensure that every opportunity their teammates provide gets turned into an explosive play.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the guys did get an opportunity to make a play\u2014ie: Jamo, St. Brown\u2014our playmakers, they made plays,\u201d Montgomery said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Detroit Lions wide receivers coach\/assistant head coach Scottie Montgomery opened his Thursday press conference with an interesting statement.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2070],"tags":[4566,374,692,391,2493,113,7,1674,4563,4423,6282,6,18176,3394,4378,1471],"class_list":{"0":"post-380607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-bears","8":"tag-amon-ra-st-brown","9":"tag-bears","10":"tag-chicago","11":"tag-chicago-bears","12":"tag-chicagobears","13":"tag-detroit-lions","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-jahmyr-gibbs","16":"tag-jameson-williams","17":"tag-jaquan-brisker","18":"tag-kalif-raymond","19":"tag-nfl","20":"tag-scottie-montgomery","21":"tag-the-bears","22":"tag-the-lions","23":"tag-tyrique-stevenson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115231740847585911","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}