Ty Montgomery will wear a number that most running backs aren’t allowed to wear, and we explain why it’s actually okay under the NFL rules.
It isn’t often that NFL players make full-time position changes from wide receiver to running back, but Ty Montgomery has done it successfully for the Green Bay Packers. Because he’s now officially a running back, many fans assumed he would have to change his number away from the No. 88 he wore in seasons past and pick a new one between 20 and 49 like RBs normally do.
As it turns out, he’s just fine continuing to wear 88 even though that’s not a legal number for most backs.
The always excellent Paul Lukas, Uni Watch columnist for ESPN explained why this week. It has to do with a very specific section of the NFL’s rules on uniform numbers, one that applies directly to Montgomery’s rare but not unique case:
"If a player changes his position during his playing career in the NFL and such change moves him from a position as an ineligible pass receiver to that of an eligible pass receiver, or from a position as an eligible pass receiver to that of an ineligible pass receiver, he must be issued an appropriate new jersey number. A change in jersey numeral is not required if the change is from an ineligible position to another ineligible position, or from an eligible position to another eligible position, provided that the player has participated at least one season at his position prior to the change."
There are a couple of important parts there when it applies to Montgomery. The first and most obvious is that he went from WR to RB, both eligible receiver positions, as opposed to someone switching from TE to OT who would have to pick a new number.
The other part is that Montgomery played his entire rookie season in 2015 as a wide receiver before the packers turned to him as a running back partially out of desperation midway through 2016 (though Montgomery had some experience running the football from the backfield at Stanford as well). That’s really what makes the exception in the NFL’s jersey number rule apply to him, just as it would if, say the Seattle Seahawks decided to make C.J. Prosise into a full-time wideout, where he’d be allowed to keep wearing the No. 22.
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Montgomery’s situation is also similar to that of former NFL player Eric Metcalf, who played running back in college and for the Cleveland Browns before joining the Atlanta Falcons and wearing No. 21 despite playing wide receiver.
In any case, if someone insists that Montgomery will need to change his jersey number now that he’s officially a running back, just insist that they are incorrect and rest assured you are right. The 88 is his unless he wants to change for some reason.