As the 2023 offseason foreshadowed, Josh Jacobs departed the Raiders in free agency. The former rushing champion inked a four-year, $48MM deal with the Packers this spring, a move he long contemplated. 
[RELATED: Raiders Did Not Discuss New Deal With Jacobs Prior To Departure]
When addressing his decision to sign in Green Bay, Jacobs noted (via Ryan Wood of the Green Bay Press-Gazette) he turned down more lucrative offers from other interested parties. He added that roughly one dozen teams showed different levels of interest in the lead-in to free agency. Joining a contending team helped make Jacobs’ decision easier, though.
“I didn’t want to go to a team where I felt like I wanted to be in a rebuilding situation,” the 26-year-old said. “I didn’t want to go to a team where I felt like I couldn’t come in and immediately make an impact and be able to be one of the factors to get over the hump.”
Jacobs said his suitors included the Texans, Giants, Broncos and Cardinals. Those teams offered varying potential in terms of Super Bowl contention in the immediate future, and the former first-rounder noted he spent much of the 2023 campaign observing the Packers’ development on offense. Green Bay’s offer was $3-$4MM lower than ones made by other teams, he said, but familiarity was another factor working in the Packers’ favor in this situation.
Jacobs contacted Rich Bisaccia while exploring the possibility of a Green Bay deal. The latter served as special teams coordinator (and, briefly, interim head coach) of the Raiders before taking charge of the Packers’ special teams in 2022. Bisaccia, along with former Raiders teammate Keisean Nixon and ex-college teammate Xavier McKinney represent familiar faces Jacobs will be reuniting with on his new team. Given the Packers’ decision to move on from Aaron Jones, he will also face heavy expectations as the their undisputed lead back.
“I wanted to be a Raider,” Jacobs added. “Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to be with one team, finish my career with one team… So coming into that [2023] season, everything felt weird. I felt like I’m going to have this crazy year, and you don’t even want me here. So the writing was already on the wall. Obviously, I still tried to come in and put my best foot forward, but I knew it was coming toward that time.”
Jacobs was limited to 13 games last season, and he had career lows across the board. As expected, Vegas moved on with Zamir White as their lead back while adding veteran Alexander Mattison as a backup. That tandem will be much more cost-effective than a RB room led by Jacobs would have been, but Green Bay’s run to the NFC divisional round will lead to expectations of a strong 2024 performance. It will be interesting to see how he fares with his new team and whether or not his free agent decision proves to be a sound one.
Texans would have been a great choice
The Packers and Texans were the only two choices. The other folks are clown organizations at this point.
Meh
Didn’t Nixon go the bears?!?
Keisean Nixon is in GB. I looked into it, I don’t think he ever was in CHI. Signed by OAK as undrafted free agent. Raider from 2019-2021, been in GB 22′-23′.
I believe you’re thinking of Mr Simone Biles, aka Johnny Owens.
Josh Jacobs is going to tear it up this season. He has been screwed at every pivotal career turn by the Raider Organization. Gruden wanted to work his contract extension and was forced out, McDaniels refused the 5th year option, Antonio Pierce is yet another new re-start.
The Packers have gone all in on Josh Jacobs and he is going to prove a lot of people wrong for not believing in him.
It’s essentially a series of one year deals for JJ. I think GB can opt out any year (after this one) so it’s really a one year 12 million guaranteed. Thats not “all in” by my standards. I wish nothing but the best for JJ but I think Zeus will prove the Raider made the right move.
I don’t know for sure if Jacobs will tear it up-only because he has a lot of wear on him right now-but I do agree completely with you, barber. Jacobs’ advantage right now, though, is that LaFleur runs a very running back friendly system, and a back with similar capabilities in Jones flourished in that system.
Jacobs is a bit bigger, and not many backs catch better than Jones, but both he and Jones have a versatile skillset and can attack from multiple angles. Jacobs is one of the few backs who can run as hard as Jones. Neither are particularly big (Jones is actually on the smaller side), but both can run between tackles because they just run so hard. To balance out my previous statement about Jones’ pass catching, Jacobs is one of the few backs in the league that runs harder than Jones. The Packers will probably put him in a good position to succeed, but we’ll see how it turns out.
@MDB
It’s a bit silly to say Gruden was forced out when he publicly admitted all the wounds were self inflicted.
JJ is such a malcontent, so glad he is gone from the Raiders. I don’t buy for a second that those other teams were truly interested or JJ wouldn’t have immediately signed with Green Bay on day 1/hour 1 of Free Agency.
NYG offered something more lucrative than Green Bay (1 yr, $12M) yet settled on Devin Singletary at 3 years $16.5M?!?! Total bullshit that NYG offered Jacobs anything.
Yeah I don’t recall hearing the Giants actually offered Jacobs a deal. I know they had some interest initially
Of all of these trams, only the Texans addressed their need here. This tells me that the others still are not comfortable with their starters. For the Giants, this is no surprise-we all knew that Singletary was a last second emergency signing. It is ironic that New York would spurn one member of last year’s “Running Back Contract Emergency” alliance for another, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Jacobs was wary of them due to that development. Still, I don’t think that New York anticipated the Barkley deal going down like it did. In either case, the news that New York wanted to upgrade its current backfield is no surprise.
Arizona was using a platoon approach even with Conner last year, so it’s also not a huge surprise. They did lose some members of that group, and Conner is 29 with some injury history. Jacobs is also not his youngest, but adding another high volume back to take pressure off Conner-who is a big, between the tackles back who did most of his damage at the goal-line-isn’t exactly a surprise. I’d see the Cardinals going after a shiftier back to contrast more from Conner, but Jacobs is pretty versatile, and thought may have been more along the lines of volume than style.
Denver keeps signing or drafting backs. I don’t know how many backs they think they need, or if they want Jacobs specifically, but they’ve been tied (admittedly, sometimes by rumor) to several high profile veteran backs since Payton’s arrival. I don’t know exactly what is prompting this-maybe they just want someone to lead the run game and are trying to eliminate any chances-but it appears that they’re not comfortable with their run game options right now. Unless someone bursts it open this year, I’d expect Denver to continue to look for a back, despite having four possible options right now to take carries. Hopefully for them, they won’t get desperate enough to make a move that they’ll later regret.
I think the Broncos would need a lot of RB regrets to match the number of QB regrets they had when Elway was the GM.
Fair.