James Montgomery Highlights, plus Cal Blog Evaluation

I know a lot of people have been excited about James Montgomery, and for good reason. An outstanding running back in high school, the Parade All-American ran for over 4900 yards and 82 TD’s in his time at Cordova High School in Rancho Cordova, CA. But aside from some glowing practice reports and some quick snippets of him here and there, we really haven’t seen much.

Until now. Danzig from CaliforniaGoldenBlogs.com was cool enough to pass on some James Montgomery highlights out of his archives. These are all highlights of Montgomery from his “rookie” frosh season at Cal, where he came off the bench to rush for 171 yards, averaging 4.8 yards per carry in the process. Check it out:

And for good measure, here’s Danzig’s personal report on Montgomery, based on what he’s seen out of #21:

We saw Monty as more of a power back than a speedster. He got most of his reps during short-yardage situations for good reason. Monty cannot be taken down with arm tackles and he had a knack for always getting an extra three yards while being tackled. He would do this by twisting and torquing his body toward the first down marker. He almost never went down during first contact. He does have the speed to get to the edge and turn the corner but he never looked like he was moving that fast. We hardly ever passed to him, but when we did, he caught everything… no drops. While on campus, he was an ideal student and never got in trouble.

I can see what he says about being a little more of a power guy vs. the speedster type.  He runs hard and didn’t exactly look like a guy who would shy away from contact, even as a true frosh. And I love the idea of always moving forward!  No dancing around, tip-toeing through the tulips or anything like that.  And the catching the ball out of the backfield is a nice bonus.

Sound good? Sounds and LOOKS REAL good. Thanks to Danzig for the video and evaluation. We look forward to Montgomery making some nice highlights in Crimson-n-Gray.

That’s it for now. As always, GO COUGS!