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David Montgomery injury: status, history and who gets his targets if he is out

Houston Texans · Running back · status this week: QUESTIONABLE (ESPN)

Checked Oct 21, 2026.

Over his 7 full seasons on record, David Montgomery played 105 of 117 regular-season games (90%), and 5 of 6 so far in 2026. Season by season.

The Houston Texans room absorbs +5.60 carries, and Woody Marks takes the largest single share at +2.80. The work stays overwhelmingly inside the running back room.

Where the work goes

Change in projected carries for every other player in the offense. The bars are small on purpose — a vacated role is shared out, and any tool showing one replacement absorbing a whole target load is telling you something the data does not support.

Every player in the room

Injury history

Over his 7 full seasons on record, David Montgomery played 105 of 117 regular-season games (90%), and 5 of 6 so far in 2026.

Regular season only. Games played counts games with at least one offensive snap; designations are from the official weekly injury report, which does not list players on injured reserve, so a long absence shows as missed games rather than as weeks listed out.

What the data says happens

Measured across every regular-season game from 2018 onward, each beneficiary compared against his own trailing four-game form and net of what the same players do in weeks the room’s number one actually plays.

When a team’s number-one running back does not play, what each position group gains:

The room total is predictable. Which player takes it is not. Every candidate predictor of who gains — pecking order, snap share, route depth, trailing targets — correlates at roughly r = 0.02. In any single week one player usually takes about 60% of what was vacated; it is simply not predictably the same one.

Cascade effects 2018–2026, paired within player, net of control · projections as-of-week with no lookahead · 2026 week 7