Green Bay Packers newly signed running back Josh Jacobs has been the subject of a few interesting predictions lately. The primary prediction being, rookie MarShawn Lloyd will have his job as the starter by season’s end, and that Jacobs will be released by the Packers after playing out just one year of his contract with the team.
Fans suspected that Jacobs’ recent contract with the Packers lent itself to (sort of) secretly being a one year deal. Jacobs signed a four year $48 million contract with the team, but he was only given $12.5 million in guaranteed money. This essentially means the Packers can cut bait with Jacobs after one year with very little monetary forfeiture.
There seems to be even more backing this theory when you consider that Josh Jacobs was arguably a bit of a panic signing by Green Bay. According to a story by ESPN’s Rob Demovsky, the Packers “pivoted” to signing a big name running back after they failed to convince Aaron Jones to take a pay cut. So if they were in a hurry to bridge a gap, maybe this short term exit plan with Jacobs was what they opted for?
Here’s Why That’s Not Happening
Packers General Manager Brian Gutekunst has put together a team of knowledgeable scouts, and he himself has been a high-end evaluator of talent. Signing Jacobs was not some completely last-minute panic decision, and there’s a few pieces of evidence to support that claim.
First, everything I said previously; Gutekunst clearly believes that Josh Jacobs can help the team win games, and at age 26 his ability to do so surely won’t suddenly fall off of a cliff in the next 6 months. We’re talking about the guy who led the league in rushing yards in 2022 with the Las Vegas Raiders of all teams.
The second reason is that running back is not an extremely worthwhile position to dump money into, so if the Packers front office even sort of wanted to cheap out and play a combination of Emmanuel Wilson and a rookie or two, they certainly would have done just that.
Most of the metrics used to imply that Jacobs isn’t worth keeping, or that he is easily replaceable, rely on fringe advanced metrics such as “rushing yards over expected.” Now, those metrics can absolutely be meaningful in certain contexts; but anyone can see that Jacobs was simply playing on a terrible Raiders team and still likely has a lot left in the tank. A change of scenery and an implementation on a much more efficient offense will all but certainly net Jacobs a more successful season than his 2023 outing in Las Vegas.
This prediction about Jacobs’ near future has even spawned some online rumblings about how MarShawn Lloyd has apparently already been outperforming Josh Jacobs in practice. This is of course false, as Lloyd’s hamstring injury has kept him from practicing much at all recently, although he has looked good in the drills he’s done.
Outlook:
Lloyd will open the season as a backup to Jacobs (once he’s healthy enough to fill that role) and he will assuredly continue being a backup for the rest of the season if the backfield stays healthy.
Whether or not Lloyd can show that he has what it takes to usurp Jacobs in a single season while earning limited playing time remains to be seen, but I’d bet Jacobs is the Packers running back for at least the next two seasons. Lloyd can certainly break out and become a superstar, but the Packers certainly aren’t actively searching for an excuse to cut a player that they signed to a four year contract six months ago.
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Zack is a college student and cheesehead from California. When he’s not in class or writing, you can find him talking about the Packers on Twitter at @Zack_Upchurch.
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