I’m pretty sure all you need to know about Packer wide receiver/running back/special teams player Ty Montgomery is that his mother taught him how to play football.
Also, Monday night he threw me a toy football and I caught it.
Hello Mr. Favorite Packer on the team.
With his amiable attitude, sure hands and impressive skill set, Montgomery has been a godsend to the battered Packers. Drafted as a wide receiver, he has been playing running back almost exclusively since both Eddie Lacey and James Starks suffered season ending injuries.
My sister Kathy realized his potential before almost anyone else.
“I really like Ty Montgomery,” she said during an early season, pre-game phone call in which we kind of discussed essential tailgating details but mostly analyzed the team. “He’s versatile and really smart.”
I took notice and, eventually, so did the rest of the league.
Monday night my husband and I popped down to Clubhouse Live, the show Montgomery hosts with Gannett reporters Brett Christopherson and Ricardo Arguello. We’d never been to a Packer show and we had a great time.
Montgomery, a Stanford graduate and a workaholic with a contagious smile, personifies the team’s “Next Man Up” philosophy. Asked if the early bye week affected him because it meant he had to play 13 straight games in the bang-em-up trenches, he said it didn’t matter.
He said he had a job to do, just like all the rest of us, and that he was happy to do it. If he gets banged up, he said, it doesn’t matter because it’s part of the job and he’s looking forward to getting out there and doing it again.
Montgomery gets this attitude comes straight from his mom. Lisa Frazier raised her only biological son with intention.
“If you know anything about my mom, she’s going to want to learn so she can then teach it to me, the things I don’t know,” Montgomery said in a recent ESPN article. “Just a quick example: I didn’t know how to tie a tie, and not having a dad around, she learned how to tie a tie so she could teach me.”
The oldest daughter of a pastor, Frazier also taught her son how to play football.
“She taught me how to get into a three-point stance, a lot of the mentality of playing tough and giving them the shoulder pads and hitting ’em and don’t be a punk, run hard, stuff like that,” Montgomery said in the same article. “It’s all from my mom.”
Frazier also thought Montgomery might benefit from having brothers. She became a licensed foster care provider and, to date, has fostered 17 young men. Last summer, Milwaukee’s Coalition for Children, Youth and Families awarded Frazier the Foster Parent Hero Award.
I can’t wait to see what Lisa Frazier’s son does on Sunday, although, of course, he’s already a winner by any standards.
Still, a ring would make a mighty nice belated birthday present for the young athlete who turns 24 on January 22.
Go Pack Go!
Here’s a little proof that Kathy had Montgomery’s number before the rest of us did…
 
Forget about your camera – I think next time you should bring your sister Kathy!
Lol! Come on up.next Monday. I’ll save you a spot.
Hubby and I are in Fantasy Football league. I had Aaron the year Green Bay beat the Steelers and I won the league. Every year since then, Rick always gets a higher number than me and gets Aaron in the 1st round. This year he has Jordy too! I have no Packers on my team. I won the regular season (I had David Johnson and Jordan Howard which were my money makers). Good luck on Sunday!!