Josh Jacobs is third on the Raiders all-time rushing list, but his final year with the team was one he would probably like to forget.
Jacobs told The Athletic’s Dan Pompei that he was initially insulted when Josh McDaniels played him in the 2022 Hall of Fame Game while other offensive starters weren’t asked to play.
After leading the NFL in rushing that year, Pompei said Jacobs believed he was going to get a long-term deal done with the Raiders.
But that didn’t come close to happening.
“Trust was missing,” Jacobs said of his relationship with the Raiders after signing a one-year deal last August. “I wasn’t really mentally there, not happy to be there. Obviously, I loved my teammates so I was going to give everything I had for them, but I felt like I had been slapped in my face.”
According to Pompei, Jacobs asked the Raiders to trade him prior to the 2023 season. He was planning to sit out the first 12 regular season games before signing a one-year deal that ended up being worth about $1.7 million more than the $10.1 franchise tag he never signed.
There have been conflicting reports about what the Raiders offered Jacobs in the offseason, but from the outside it didn’t seem like he was a high priority to bring back.
Another interesting detail in The Athletic report is that Jacobs claimed the Giants made him an offer significantly better than the Packers offer. But in the next sentence of Pompei’s story, he added that another source told him the Giants never made Jacobs an offer…
“Jacobs [said] the Giants came on strong with an offer between $3 million and $4 million more than he eventually accepted. But a league source said the Giants never made an offer to Jacobs.”
It isn’t often that you see a player give details like these to a reporter, only to see the player’s account discredited in the same paragraph.
In the end, Jacobs seems happy to be in Green Bay and the Raiders are excited to see what they have in 24 year-old Zamir White, who is expected to be the workhorse running back in a run-first offense this year…
