–The Ravens made a low-risk, perhaps high-reward move, by acquiring running back and kick returner Ty Montgomery from the Green Bay Packers for a seventh-round draft pick in 2020.
The Ravens have struggled with their running attack all season and are ranked 24th in the league with 96.6 yards per game. Montgomery could be a boost, especially on third down. He was moved two days after fumbling a kickoff return with about two minutes left in a 29-27 loss to the Los Angeles Rams.
“He’s a very versatile player; running back, obviously very good in the pass game as a running back, as well – protection and catching the ball in the backfield and things like that – lines up at receiver at times, and then, as a kick returner,” Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said. “He’s done a good job, too, so he brings some versatility for us.”
In his fourth NFL season, Montgomery has registered 1,676 yards from scrimmage (849 rushing on 177 attempts and 827 receiving on 97 catches), scoring 10 total touchdowns (seven rushing and three receiving).
In seven games this season, he has 105 rushing yards and one touchdown on 26 carries. Montgomery also has 15 receptions for 170 yards. The 6-foot, 216-pounder also has experience as a kickoff returner, posting 794 yards on 35 returns (22.7 average) during his career.
Green Bay originally selected Montgomery out of Stanford in the third round of the 2015 draft.
–Fellow running back Alex Collins, who was limited in practice Wednesday with an ankle injury, showed some burst last week against the Carolina Panthers, running for 49 yards on 11 carries with a touchdown.
Collins finished the 2017 season ranked ninth in the league with 4.6 yards per carry. He had 973 yards on 212 carries with six touchdowns. As a result, expectations were high for him to take the next step in his development. Instead, he has struggled with three fumbles and is averaging 3.6 yards per carry.
Overall, Collins is ranked 25th in the NFL with 358 yards. The Ravens will need to get more production over the second half of the season.
–The month of October has been a horror show for the Ravens.
With the loss to the Panthers in Week 8, Baltimore fell to 3-13 in October since 2015. Head coach John Harbaugh was in no mood to discuss his team’s struggles in the 10th month of the year.
“I think probably people outside the coaching staff probably have a lot more time on their hands to look at that. I certainly have my thoughts on it,” he said. “You can go back each year and look at the years and see what was going on with the team in those type of situations and look at each game for what it’s worth.”
Nonetheless, the San Francisco 49ers at 1-15 and Cleveland Browns at 2-15 are the only teams with worse records than the Ravens in October. Harbaugh said the stats can sometimes be misleading.
“You can torture statistics any way you want and get them to tell you whatever you want them to tell you,” he said. “But, there are also statistics that are meaningful. The value in that is to study them and try to make heads or tails of them in ways that can help you go forward. That conversation now is really meaningless to us; it doesn’t really matter. I do have some opinions about it, but we have to win the next game.”
BY THE NUMBERS: 13 – Ravens-Steelers games that have been decided by three or fewer points since 2008, the most among any NFL division rivalry. In addition, 17 of the last 21 Baltimore-Pittsburgh games have been decided by one score.
