A story in The Athletic last week offered some interesting details around Josh Jacobs and his path to the Green Bay Packers in the offseason.
According to the report from national insider Dan Pompei, Jacobs asked the Raiders to trade him a year ago and was initially planning to sit out the first 12 games before he agreeing to a one-year deal just before the start of the regular season.
“There have been some reports that Josh Jacobs tried to sign with the Raiders, and the Raiders didn’t want him… I’m just going to say this. First of all, I take no umbrage with the reporters. They are reporting what they were told,” Hondo said on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast.
“But there are some details being left out of the reporting because maybe some people, whoever, are not giving all details,” Hondo continued. “The Raiders wanted Josh. They made him an offer. They made him an offer that had he accepted, I would have been very critical of. And then, you know, he goes and gets a Green Bay offer. There are differing opinions on whether he let the Raiders match it, but the point was, they made him an offer that they had reason to believe he was going to accept. And so he didn’t, and he’s no longer a Raider.”
A lot of the details in Pompei’s report came directly from Jacobs, and there’s no question that Jacobs didn’t like the way the Raiders handled his contract over the last two years.
Jacobs said the Kansas City Chiefs were one of nine teams that reached out to his agent, but said he was never going to sign with a rival team.
“They were trying to get me hard,” Jacobs told The Athletic. “But there was no way I was going there. I feel like once you are rivals with somebody, you have a genuine hate for them. I couldn’t see myself in that color. And besides, I never wanted to be the guy that joined the dominant team. I want to be the guy that beats the dominant team.”
Jacobs left the Raiders with the third-most rushing yards in team history, behind only Marcus Allen and Mark van Eeghen.
