David Montgomery is only a handful of practices into his first training camp with the Houston Texans, and the organization is already showing him off. The team’s official account posted a short clip Wednesday of Montgomery working through a ball-handling drill at NRG Park, captioned “D-MO just gettin’ started.”
It’s a small moment — 19 seconds of footage from a padless practice rep — but it lands at a genuinely interesting point in Montgomery’s transition to Houston. He’s not walking into a clear lead role. He’s walking into a committee.
How Montgomery Got to Houston
The Texans acquired Montgomery from the Detroit Lions on March 2, sending Detroit a 2026 fourth-round pick, a 2027 seventh-round pick and offensive lineman Juice Scruggs. The move came together fast — just hours after an ESPN report suggested Montgomery wanted out of Detroit, prompting a pointed social media reaction from the running back himself before the trade was finalized.
D-MO just gettin’ started. pic.twitter.com/G5hCAfRjSq
— Houston Texans (@HoustonTexans) July 29, 2026
In three seasons with the Lions, Montgomery ran for 2,506 yards and 33 touchdowns, splitting time in Detroit’s “Sonic and Knuckles” backfield alongside Jahmyr Gibbs. His workload had been shrinking as Gibbs’ role grew, and last season he logged just 158 carries — his lowest usage as a pro, even with eight rushing touchdowns to show for it.
Houston represented a fresh shot at consistent touches. Whether he gets them the way fans initially assumed is a different question.
A Backfield Built to Share the Load
When Houston traded for Montgomery, the expectation around the league was that he’d walk in as the clear RB1. That’s not how the Texans are framing it. According to NFL Network’s Jane Slater, Houston’s plan is for Montgomery and second-year back Woody Marks to split lead-back duties rather than hand the job to one player outright.
Marks, a fourth-round pick in 2025 out of USC, closed his rookie year with 703 rushing yards and flashed as a receiving threat, including a 100-yard, one-touchdown performance in Houston’s playoff loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. That kind of finish appears to have earned him real trust from the coaching staff — enough that the Texans aren’t treating him as a training-wheels backup.
Slater later clarified her own framing on the topic, telling listeners the word “split” came too early — the team hasn’t put players in pads yet — and that “tandem” is closer to the actual plan. She also relayed that Montgomery is expected to get slightly more work than Marks, describing it as a “luxury” rather than a limitation. Her reasoning: fifteen teams had two different running backs top 700 rushing yards in 2025, compared to just five teams over the five years before that. Keeping both backs fresh, she argued, matters more now than funneling everything through one workhorse.
| Player | 2025 Team | 2025 Rushing Yards | 2025 Rushing TDs |
|---|---|---|---|
| David Montgomery | Detroit Lions | 716 | 8 |
| Woody Marks | Houston Texans | 703 | — |
What Camp Reps Actually Show
None of this is settled by one practice, and nobody in Houston is pretending otherwise. Contact drills haven’t started yet — most of what’s visible right now is footwork, ball security, and handoff timing with quarterback C.J. Stroud, the kind of installation-period work that looks better on tape than it tells you about Week 1 usage.
Still, people around the building have noticed something. Detroit reporting from earlier this month described Montgomery bursting through the line during OTAs with the kind of contact-free intensity that still reads as physical, even without pads. Off the field, Slater has said Montgomery has already made himself a resource for the younger backs in the room, hosting dinners and mentoring as much as competing.
That dual role — competitor and locker-room presence — is part of why Houston brought him in during the first place, even if the touches end up split down the middle with Marks.
What’s Next
Houston’s training camp runs through August 31 at NRG Park, with padded practices and joint sessions against the Las Vegas Raiders and Carolina Panthers still to come. Those reps — not the shorts-and-helmets period the Texans are currently in — will start to answer how the Montgomery-Marks committee actually divides up in live snaps.
For now, the Texans seem comfortable letting the moment speak for itself: a trade-deadline addition getting his footing, a second-year back who already earned the coaching staff’s trust, and a coaching staff banking on both.
