David Montgomery 2026 Season Preview — a decline, a trade, a new lead role | Muffed

David Montgomery just posted the worst fantasy season of his recent career as the small slice of a three-man Detroit committee — and then got traded to Houston, where he's the lead back. So you're betting that a bigger role reverses an age-and-usage decline. That's a watch. The Muffed 2026 preview.

The 2025 season was a part-time line: a hundred fifty-eight carries for seven hundred sixteen yards, eight touchdowns, RB33 per game — the smallest share of a backfield where Woody Marks and Nick Chubb ate into the work. But the efficiency held up: plus one hundred twenty-five rushing yards over expected, eleventh among backs, facing stacked boxes on a third of his carries. He could still run; he just didn't get the volume. Seven games under ten points tell the committee story.

The arc is a clean decline: fourteen-eight, fifteen-eight, then nine-eight. The touchdowns that propped up his earlier seasons faded, and the committee shrank his touches. He's a career-year-seven back.

What the data says: the efficiency is genuinely still there — rank-eleven over expected isn't a washed back. What's gone is the volume and the touchdown rate. The question 2026 answers is whether a lead role restores the touches enough to matter, on legs that are seven years in.

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The situation is the entire bet, per the reports: Houston traded for him and he enters as the number-one back, with Joe Mixon — who missed all of 2025 — expected to be released, though Woody Marks followed from the prior committee. An efficient back with a real lead role is a genuine value; an aging back inheriting a new offense's question marks is a real risk. Both are true.

The price: pick forty-nine and a half, the twentieth back. Verdict: WATCHLIST — the efficiency and the new lead role argue up, the age and the 2025 collapse argue down, and the Houston backfield isn't fully settled. The counter for him: proven efficiency plus a feature role at RB20 is how value is found. Against: year-seven backs coming off a down year don't always get the volume back, and Marks is still there.

September watch: the carry share in Houston — lead role or committee redux; and the touchdown rate, where eight on part-time work could climb with volume. Your guys, every week. Next preview's queued.