Josh Jacobs has two separate ways to miss the Packers’ opener against Minnesota, and only one of them is actually a football problem. The groin injury that’s kept him out of practice since Aug. 6 isn’t expected to cost him Week 1. The NFL’s still-open review of his May arrest is the one that could.
Matt LaFleur confirmed the injury Tuesday. “He’s gonna be out for at least this week,” the coach told reporters, a day after Jacobs sat out the preseason opener against Pittsburgh.
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None of that reads as catastrophic in isolation.
Green Bay doesn’t consider the groin serious, and LaFleur said Jacobs could be back on the practice field as soon as this week. He spent Tuesday working with the rehab group on a side field, still on schedule for a normal recovery.
The real cost isn’t a missed game.
It’s that Green Bay’s presumptive bell-cow hasn’t practiced since Aug. 6, which means the plan built around him carries zero live-rep evidence three weeks from kickoff. That plan leaned on one guy doing almost everything.
Camp reps are how an offensive line finds its footing with a new lead back and how a runner learns where a scheme actually wants him to go. Jacobs has banked none of that since Aug. 6, and there is no shortcut for it once the games start counting for real.
Jacobs carried the workload alone last season — 929 rush yards, 13 touchdowns, 36 catches for another 282 yards and a score. Emanuel Wilson, the closest thing to a proven backup, left for Seattle in free agency.
Nobody replaced him.
MarShawn Lloyd and Chris Brooks have picked up the extra first-team reps, with Pierre Strong Jr. also in the mix. Lloyd is a 2024 third-round pick who has appeared in exactly one career game. I did the math the way I used to during my $50-a-piece freelance days: proven NFL starters in that backfield room behind Jacobs, not counting Jacobs, is zero. Green Bay has no real Plan B.
The groin is the coachable half of this.
That other half isn’t coachable at all. Adam Schefter reported Aug. 11 that potential discipline tied to Jacobs’ May arrest in Wisconsin is still under review — the NFL still hasn’t ruled on his discipline, and it’s been sitting there for months.
“It’s also possible that your team, the Green Bay Packers, are going to lose Josh Jacobs,” Schefter said. “That also still is under review and still a pending situation with the NFL.”
That review opened in May.
Three weeks from a season opener, the league still hasn’t said whether it will rule before Week 1, during the season, or not at all, and that timeline belongs to the NFL, not to LaFleur.
No charges have been filed by the Brown County DA’s office since the arrest that started all of this. Nothing here speculates on where that goes, because that’s not a football question.
What is a football question: Green Bay staked its season-opening offense on one player absorbing nearly the entire workload, and that player has now missed the heart of camp while a separate process outside the building still holds real power over his availability. LaFleur can manage a groin rehab schedule. He cannot manage the league’s timeline.
Jacobs’ groin will heal. The Packers’ faith in their depth chart won’t.
