There is a subset of football analyst that appears to enjoy predicting — way earlier than is necessary or useful — that a player is going to either get cut or lose his job. I understand the urge; our current content environment demands that everyone who writes or talks about sports always be doing something, anything that stands out from the crowd. If you work in legacy media, a rapidly sinking ship if there ever was one, those demands are ever-fiercer and louder. I get it! You have to sing for your supper, so sing you will.

But it’s still weird to me that at least two different ESPN writers have now predicted that Josh Jacobs is either going to lose his starting job in Green Bay or be cut after the season.

The first was Seth Walder. On September 1, he prognosticated that Jacobs would be supplanted in the starting lineup by 2024 third-round pick MarShawn Lloyd.

“Free agent signee Josh Jacobs was very effective in 2022 but recorded negative rush yards over expectation (per NFL Next Gen Stats) in 2020, 2021 and 2023,” Walder wrote. “Last season, his RYOE total was minus-86. I'm willing to bet that 2022 was Jacobs' outlier and that the Packers will prefer Lloyd as their featured back by December.”

I don’t know where it would be arranged, but I would happily take that bet if there was a chance to put actual American currency on it. I would have taken it then, and I’d take it again now. Why? Because the Packers did not pay Josh Jacobs the contract they did to sit him down behind Lloyd, or even make him merely a complementary piece to their third-round pick.

Walder was joined this week by Bill Barnwell, who wrote a (paywalled) piece this week for ESPN about this year’s resurgence of veteran running backs across the NFL. Jacobs, who is currently fourth in the NFL in rushing, is apparently the exception to that resurgence.

“While the headlines suggested the Packers gave him a four-year, $48 million dollar deal, he really landed a one-year, $14.1 million contract with three team options,” Barnwell wrote. “At this rate, I Imagine Green Bay would be better off moving on from him next year and trying to find similar production with more affordable options.”
To his point, Jacobs has a sizeable roster bonus coming his way next March, and the Packers would save money against their 2025 cap if they cut Jacobs out of this season. The logic tracks — if you agree that the Packers are dissatisfied with Jacobs and what they’ve gotten for their money this year. 

If you’re not familiar with how the Packers operate, their roster building strategy over the past few years, or how they handle their talent, both of these conclusions totally make sense. But they also don’t reflect how the Packers have built their rosters or operate historically.

The Packers have cut against the grain with their handling of the running back position over the past half decade or so. They extended Aaron Jones despite it being an analytically unsound decision to make, then kept him as they continued to retool his contact. They drafted AJ Dillon in the second round over similar complaints from more numbers-minded draftniks (myself included, to an extent!) They semi-seriously talked with the Colts about a swap for Jonathan Taylor last year. Then, the second it became clear Jones wasn’t going to accept one, final contract retooling, they cut bait and threw a bag of money at Jacobs.

The Packers want exactly what Jacobs has been: a workhorse back who’s going to touch the ball a ton (though apparently not enough for some people). They’ve fed him consistently and frequently, and the results have been good, generally. Barring a complete collapse, they were never going to bench him for anybody, much less a rookie, who rarely get big roles in Green Bay, much less for Lloyd, who was so banged up after training camp that he was scratched from the Packers’ Week 1 lineup. His list of maladies was so long that his return to the field lasted less than one whole game before he landed on injured reserve.

But I don’t even care to argue the specifics here, because this really just comes from a place of ignorance. Walder and Barnwell are writing from their spreadsheets, a fine enough approach in most circumstances. But it ignores the reality of how the Packers have operated in the past and are operating now. The Packers want running backs and they’re willing to pay them. They don’t play rookies a ton unless they have to. Josh Jacobs wasn’t going to get benched this season and he isn’t going anywhere until the end of next season, at the earliest.