Mike Davis sat at his locker inside Halas Hall on Nov. 5. He knew what was coming later in the week.
After giving him only 71 offensive snaps all season, the Bears could help their case for a compensatory draft pick by cutting Davis. And they would, four days later.
“Things happen,” the running back said then. “So my mindset is always to just be ready, no matter what.”
Turned out, he was ready all along. Two days after the Bears cut Davis last year, the Panthers claimed him to be star Christian McCaffrey’s backup.
He’s proven his worth the last three games. Since the Panthers put McCaffrey on injured reserve with a high ankle sprain, Davis has totaled 45 carries for 219 yards and two touchdowns. His 30 receptions for 206 yards this season trails only the Saints’ Alvin Kamara among running backs. He leads the NFL with 21 broken tackles.
He’s looked like a star.
“Mike Davis has come in and taken full advantage of his opportunity,” Bears defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano said Thursday. “We all know that he was here, so there’s gonna be extra motivation. Like he needs it — he’s a damn beast as it is.”
He’d sure look nice in the backfield next to David Montgomery, playing the pass-catching role the injured Tarik Cohen once inhabited. Or maybe even playing instead of Montgomery, the second-year running back who’s yet to prove he’s even a league-average starter.
After giving Davis a two-year, $6 million contract, ignoring him and waiving him, the Bears will get a front-row view of his hard-charging runs Sunday.
How could they have missed so badly? They fell in love with a different running back — Montgomery, whom they drafted in the third round two months after they signed Davis — and lacked the creativity to find the veteran a role.
“We ended up having the ability to get David last year after we picked up Mike, so we had a couple backs there with Tarik,” coach Matt Nagy said. “So it just happened to be that way.”
Davis only had eight career starts when the Bears signed him, but they, somehow, couldn’t fold him into a busy backfield. And then they bet big on Montgomery, who finished last season ranked 39th among regular NFL running backs with a 3.7 yards-per-carry average. That experience hasn’t exactly caused him to blossom this year; he ranks 31st with 3.9 yards.
“It was kind of the situation that we were in,” running backs coach Charles London said. “David was playing pretty well and we tried to get him some more touches. And it’s just kind of how it happened.”
Davis said he never got a good explanation for why he wasn’t used more last year.
“I don’t know what happened in that department,” he told Panthers reporters Wednesday.
It motivates him, though.
“Anybody would be pissed off when they’re cut,” he said. “I don’t know any other way to take it.”
For someone who already runs angry, that’s a scary thought.
“We’ve gotta take on blocks, we’ve gotta get off blocks, we’ve gotta swarm this guy,” Pagano said. “We’ve gotta tackle. If we tackle like we did last week, he’ll have 200 yards on us.”
