Not since the days of Ace Gutowsky and Dutch Clark have the Lions done things that the current offense is pulling off.
When David Montgomery exploded through the Chargers defense for a 75-yard touchdown, it was his second TD run of at least 20 yards this season. Fellow RB Jahmyr Gibbs also has two TDs on runs of 20 yards or more.
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That doesn’t happen very often, having two RBs each score on runs of 20-plus yards. In Detroit, it hadn’t happened in 87 years. From the Lions PR team:
.@Lions RBs @MontgomerDavid & Jahmyr Gibbs each have two 20-yard TD rushes this season.
The last time Detroit had two players with multiple 20-yard rushing TDs in a season was in 1936.
Detroit’s RBs have 1,502 scrimmage yards in 2023, the 2nd-most among any team’s RB unit. pic.twitter.com/C8U6iWbvzi
— Detroit Lions PR (@LionsPR) November 13, 2023
The last Lions RB duo to pull off what Gibbs and Montgomery have done in the first nine games of 2023 was Clark and Gutowsky back in 1936. They were keys to an offense that ran for nearly 2,900 yards in a 12-game season, back when the forward pass wasn’t used often; the ’36 Lions passed for just 818 yards on 61 completions on the season.