Packers Open Without Josh Jacobs, and the Hole Is Bigger Than One Week
Green Bay plays its opener without Josh Jacobs, and the reporting says the damage doesn't stop there. The Packers' lead back will miss the first game of the season and likely at least five more, which puts the floor at six games, roughly a third of a 17-game slate.
Matt LaFleur didn't sidestep it. "I know the character of the guy," the head coach said, a public defense that lands differently than the usual next-man-up boilerplate. Coaches defend players on the way out all the time. LaFleur doing it before the season even starts reads as a signal about how the organization views Jacobs long term, not just how it fills his carries for the next month and a half.
What the reporting gives us is length. What it doesn't give us is the underlying reason, and that gap matters for anyone trying to project when this actually ends. Six games is the reported floor. Floors move.
For the offense, this is a LaFleur problem before it's a fantasy problem. Green Bay built its run game around Jacobs as a volume back, and there's no replacing 60-plus minutes of that with a committee and pretending nothing changed. The Packers haven't tipped their hand on the depth chart behind him, which is the real story of the next two weeks in Green Bay.
Fantasy managers who spent a premium pick on Jacobs should be working the waiver wire now, not Thursday night after the snap counts come out. The back who takes the first handoff becomes the add. That's the whole read until the team clarifies the pecking order.
My verdict: Green Bay shouldn't hand this backfield to an unproven backup and hope. Brian Gutekunst should be on the phone for a veteran who can absorb early-down work, and I'd bet the Packers add one before the bye. Jacobs comes back to a smaller role than the one he left. That's what a six-game floor does.
