Yep, he doesn't have much left. He will probably have a few games where he's healthy and will shine, but injuries will knock him out for chunks of the season, and age conquers all, especially in NFL RB's.
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Rumors were the Packers wanted Jones to reduce his number by 50% which would have been between 5-7 million in a hometown discount. Crazy that he is reportedly going to sign with Minnesota for the same price. I guess ego and feelings will always play in this game.
I really like Jones and think he is a top 5 or 6 back in the league, unfortunately he missed too much time. Jacobs is fine, obviously he lead the league in rushing two seasons ago and he is only 26. From a a business decision this all made sense.
Oh well. I wish they'd kept Jones, but all things considered, we're better off with Jacobs. I was expecting Jones to soak some team for a really big amount for a fairly long term, but no, just $7 million for one year. If the Packers didn't want to pay him that much, maybe they know something about him, injury-wise.
This Jacobs contract is like something I haven't heard before, 1 year, then 3 more of team options - that's pretty team friendly. If he flounders, the Packers don't owe him anything past the first year. But if he's good, we've got him for four years at today's money. And at age 26, he should be good for that long.
Now let's draft a good 2nd or 3rd rounder to rotate with him - ideally IMO Braelon Allen.
Long term I agree. I think Jacobs is tough and can be on the field all three downs. He's 220 pounds and will be a problem to tackle in December at Lambeau.
Aaron Jones is going to be beloved by his Vikings teammates quickly. He's genuinely a good dude and I wish him the best of luck (minus 2 games). If they run him like they tried to run Cook or Mattison on that field he's going to have a knee injury by Game 6 though.
For MIN, I don't know what they are doing. Are they rebuilding? I assume they are going to chase a QB in Round 1 (McCarthy? Nix? Penix?) in the second tier below Caleb/Maye/Daniels. Do the GM or HC have some kind of grace period? That team is not going to be expected to threaten for the NFCN crown; maybe they think they can squeak to a 7 seed but I think that's very optimistic. Aside from Cousins, there wasn't much on the market for QBs, especially after Baker and Russell signed. Are they tanking? I can't figure it out yet, after the draft it will make more sense what they are doing.
Also - if they trade for Justin Fields they are insane.
A HC usually gets one chance to hitch his wagon to a QB, a GM might get two chances. I'll be very curious to see what MIN (and CHI) do.
Back to Aaron Jones -- I would've thought he'd go to HOU or DAL instead. Maybe even JAX. He definitely wanted to stay close and stick it to Gute. I don't blame him, in a way. He already did one big pay cut, why take another when he did everything he could to prove his value?
Not gonna hate on him, he's a Packer HOF'er. All the same, I suspect he will regret his decision. He'd have been an awesome RB2 to pair with Jacobs.
I will miss Aaron Jones, a truly exciting player to watch. I suspect the team will miss him too. Players talk about the personality of a team changing from year to year, some years more than others. Last year was a big change with Rodgers leaving and Love taking over. Next year may be as well. I think Jones especially, but Dillon too were strong, positive influences on the team character. It will be different.
I was hoping he would stay, and the draft would supply his eventual replacement. I hoped he would retire a Packer.
Jacobs can be a true workhorse type of back, something Jones never was because the team has always preached the need to manage his workload. If he had a busy series of downs, the next series he was on the bench. Understandable, with as small as Jones is. But, he was a great, great asset to have; and for the most part I think the Packers used him well to get the most out of him for a long time. A back like Jacobs might make it easier to develop a rhythm in the offense, because he will play series after series.
It will seem wrong to watch him on any team other than GB, especially so in a purple jersey. But, realistically, it is doubtful he will be playing in 2026 no matter where he is or could have been.
Andy Herman
@AndyHermanNFL
Who will have the better next 2 seasons in the NFL?
Aaron Jones 9.7%
Josh Jacobs 90.3%
2,611 votes
·
23 hours left
Jones missed a lot of time this year, which could be a foreshadowing of the future for an aging back, but in the previous four years he missed only four games in total. That's very good for the position.
With the way he performed at the end of the season, it is hard to see him go.
Jacobs did not perform particularly well in 2023. Is he one of those RBs who plays very well, but for a very short time? Remains to be seen. He didn't have a lot of carries in college, unlike some who flame out early in the NFL.
Ever since John Brockington, I don't count on backs for more than a few years.
There was a lot going on last year. He was coming off a 2022 season where he had almost 400 touches. That might have taken something out of him. The Raiders put the franchise tag on him and he didn't report until late August when they agreed to a contract. The Raiders offense was horrible last year, especially once Garoppolo went out with an injury.
I believe the Packers will be better about not overusing him. Don't think you'll see him with any more 400 touch seasons.
What I saw on film was that , similar to Jones, Jacobs looked faster than his 40 time. I also saw some shiftiness although maybe not quite as much as Jones. Jacobs has some power, but Jones had more than a lot of RBs too. In short, they are fairly similar. I'm wondering if Jacobs' downturn last year might have been a bit of dogging it because he got franchised. If so, it could show an attitude problem, but it's more good thing than bad, because it could mean he's still about as good as he was in his two big years.
I also think the Packers should not overuse him - as I've been saying, draft somebody good on the second day to rotate with him.
All true, but..... It just seems that often when backs go through a year like that, after a number of highly productive years, they just lose something, and never again approach what they once were.
GB is going from a 5yds/carry rb to a 4yds/carry rb. Jones never averaged less then 4.6/carry over a season. Jacobs has twice been under 4.0/carry (3.9 in 2020, 3.5 last year).
What I hope is that Jacobs becomes the workhorse, consistent running back that Dillon always teased at being but never really was, and that GB finds a quick, fast and elusive runner and receiver to replace what Jones was, even if for fewer touches per game than Jones was.
GB is only half done rebuilding their backfield.
Agreed. They still need Jones’s replacement, and that’s not going to be easy to find.
Man, I was hoping he’d be back for one more year, and the Packers would draft his understudy this April.
They’re still going to be drafting a running back or two in April.
Jacobs may not be flashy, but he's plenty good enough to punish defenses if they don't respect the run. I don't know we need a speedy back, but we need more depth.
even better that our best player last year cost to much money to keep, his replacement costs more, and somehow we give nixon 6 million a year
A lot of people are saying that they don't see much difference between Jones and Jacobs, but this is a significant one right there. I think a lot of fans still don't quite seem to get how special Jones was and sorta still is.
Aaron Jones has an extraordinary YPC average - eye-poppingly impressive. His YPC is 5.0. In the entire history of the NFL, of all running backs with 850+ carries, only 3 averaged more than Jones, and 2 of those 3 are named either Jim Brown or Mercury Morris.
He's one of only 3 players who have gained 5.25 YPC in 4 separate seasons, and the other 2 are 50's legends Brown and Joe Perry. For the sake of reference, Ahman Green and Jim Taylor each managed that only once for Green Bay. Marshall Faulk and Barry Sanders each did it 3 times, OJ Simpson did it twice, and Ladainian Tomlinson did it once.
That's the company that Aaron Jones is in. For several years now, I've just been baffled by how many Packer fans (and the league as a whole) do not seem to grasp what a very, very rare player Aaron Jones is. It's going to be a damned long time before we ever see another running back in Green Bay like we've enjoyed the last few years.
I suspect Jacobs' YPC is going to trend sharply upwards very soon, but as it stands right now, it's hard to deny that we gave up one of the most purely productive running backs in the history of not only the Green Bay Packers but the entire NFL and replaced him with someone who statistically seems very unlikely to ever hit the mark left by Jones. But, odds are, Jones is unlikely to clear that bar himself going forward over the next couple of years.
Jacobs may never be the RB Jones was, and in fact, almost certainly will not be. Statistically, it's very unlikely, because Jones truly was a historically great running back - I mean, truly great. Our chances of scooping up another consecutive player who is one of the most productive RBs of all time is like expecting to have 2 all-time great quarterbacks in a row, let alone 3 - and who in their right mind could ever believe something like that can, happen, right?
:wink:
Totally agree. I just hope the second piece of the puzzle is a rookie, rather than another FA, but I'd be shocked if he signed another UFA for the position when we have so many Day Two picks in a year with so many Day Two RBs.
Tundra...Is it possible to grasp everything you said, Love Jones to death, but realize he is going to be one the wrong side of 30 next season?
I'll miss him. If I were GM he would have finished his last season in GB for $9 million instead of Jacobs for even more. But the reality of the NFL is that he had trouble staying on the field. We tried to stick with Bak because of his talent. That didn't work out. This could have gone either way and I would have been fine with it.
Frozen - You stayed out in the cold too long and froze your huevos and sense off!!! No fucking way is Jones as good as Ahman. Ahman on this team last season = SB appearance. Shit Jones even spotted Ahman a fumble in SF so you can’t say about Ahman fumbling. And he damn sure isn’t as good as Jim Brown. Jones probably wouldn’t have last one season in that time.
Loved Jones when he was doing his thing but can’t put him in the workhorse category IMO.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. In fact, that's exactly how I feel. Like you, I'm not sure I'd have had the stone-cold balls to move on from him this season but if Gute thinks it's the right call, I support him. He probably knows a few things about the overall situation that you and I don't see. Maybe there's more going on with his knee or overall health that is strictly internal information; maybe the trainers have reported that the hamstring and/or the knee are not recovering as well as we fans can observe. Maybe they're reporting that his recovery from those injuries is not on a pace that they would have expected, that he's reached that point in his career where suddenly the everyday aches and pains of an NFL running back are not responding and bouncing back as quickly and as easily as they did a couple of years ago.
Maybe there are even more soft tissue things that don't rise to the level of mandated reporting, but when added up paint a picture of a player who's aging out more quickly than people outside the organization would see. Because that really is a thing in sports, and something GMs have to account for.
Could be any one of those things, but it could simply be that internally, they see a player who's wearing down more quickly than we reaize.
Or, it could be that this is an example of cutting a player a year too early rather than risk doing it a year too late. Which is a judgment call that I would completely support, because it tells me our GM is not afraid to make ruthless and unpopular decisions if he feels that's in the best interest of the team.
I just keep in mind that in Gute's worldview, this is our window. I think he had a master strategic plan that centered on our Super Bowl window opening in 2025, with 24 being the year that our young team would make a playoff run and get soime postseason experience to prepare them for a serious Lombardi run in 25. But that the second half of 23 essentially became our 2024, and jumped our timetable a full year.
And (if that is true) these 2 FA signings suggest that he gets that, that he's committed to going all in; that he's erring on the side of extreme caution, and unwilling to risk that opportunity by betting our entire stack of chips on the hope that a 30-year old running back who suddenly suffered at east 2 injuries last season is going to stay healthy for 6 solid months in 2024.
Which is why this is a bold move that I completely support, no matter how sad it makes me. For the players and the fans, it's a game, but for the front office it's a cut-throat, coldblooded business. I'm glad we seem to finally have a GM who gets that, and is capable of doing whatever it takes to move the entire team forward. Even when his decisions are very painful to see. I'm glad he's there to make those calls, because it sure as hell wouldn't be something I could do.
Oh, I'm definitely not saying Jones is as "good" as Jim Brown; that man is a legend who literally defined how the position should and would always be played for the rest of the NFL's history.
And I'm sure not going to argue that he was "better" than Ahman Green; declaring someone a "better" back is a broad, comprehensive term that goes beyond mere statistical numbers. I'm not afraid to die on a hill if I truly believe my argument is a good one, but neither one of those two hills even come close.
If you offer me a choice between 7 years of Aaron Jones in his prime, and 7 years of prime Ahman Green, and as much as I love Aaron, I'm taking Green 10 times out of 9. Because it's about so much more than just stats; Green was an absolute force of nature, a gamechanger every time he broke the huddle, not just when he had the ball. When Green was on the field, the entire defense changed their whole look. I'm old enough to have seen Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung play (still have their autographs), and I'd put Green right up there with those two - second only to Taylor.
I'm only saying that in terms of pure statistical productivity, which is one of the important meaures of what makes a back great but not the only one, Aaron Jones has had an amazing run in Green Bay. And we're lucky to have been here to see it, and I just hope that as he moves on to the next phase of his career, we all regard him with the proper appreciation.
I threw together a table comparing his stats to Ahman, but I can't figure out how to get it to display here. Hopefully it's not too hard to work out; Jones is the first "column" of numbers, and Green is the right-hand column.
Obviously, Green's career totals are way ahead of Jones, because he played 12 seasons and Jones only 7. But when you look at the stats in terms of game-by-game and season-by-season, Jones has a clear edge overall. Out of 13 significant statiscal categores, the two are remarkably close in many (if not most), but Ahman only has the edge in 2 of the 13 - yards per game, in which he has just a 1-yard advantage, and carries per game, where he leads 13.9-12.1. And in some of the others, Jones is significantly ahead (yds per carry, yds per season, and several of the receiving categories).
Jones Green
Rushing yds/yr 848 767
YDS per carry 5 4.5
YDS per game 61.2 62.2
ATT per game 12.1 13.9
Rushing TD/year 7 5
Receptions per year 38 31.5
Receptions per game 2.8 2.6
Rec. Yds/year 296.6 240.2
Rec. Yds/game 7.8 7.6
Rec. TD/game 2.6 0.08
Total yards per year 1147.7 1143.5
Total TD per year 9 6.6
Fumbles per carry 1/78.6 1/56.9
(source: statmuse)
And you can't get around the fact that of the hundreds of men who have played running back in the modern era, when one of them puts up a couple of very significant statistics (yards per carry) that have been matched or exceeded only by players like Jim Brown, Mercury Morris, and Joe Perry, that's an extraordinary accomplishment. Hundreds of other players (including a few Packers) have played many years in this league and not even come close to that. I understand that yeah, blocking schemes, coaches, Aaron Rodgers, etc, but is there really anything else about the Packers offense over the last 7 or 8 years that jumps off the page and stands out as so unique and so completely unparalled in NFL history that it would explain a running back who's good (or even really, really good) being one of only 3 players who equalled Jim Brown and Joe Perry in number of seasons with 5.25 yards per carry?
Especially in seasons where they went 7-9. 6-9-1, and 8-9? An argument could be made for 2020 (13-3), but were the 2017, 2018, and 2022 Packers legendary teams who could carry a back to greatness? Every one of those season were years where the Packers basically sucked, Rodgers struggled, and the only thing about the offense that actually worked was handing it to Aaron Jones. He wasn't coasting behind dynamic, powerhouse offenses who dominated the league and opened up numerous opportunities for the RB to exploit imbalances - he was it. He was the the most productive part of the offense all 3 of those years. On RPO plays, every D knew there was a strong likelihood it was going to be Aaron coming out of the backfield, because that was basically all we had to offer. It wasn't the offense carrying Aaron, and Aaron taking advantage of them. It was Aaron carrying the team.
Again, I'm not saying he was one of the greatest backs of all time. The statistics only go so far, and I would have a hard time arguing that it should go anywhere near that far. But I think at some point, when you're looking at Aaron's career, you have to accept that he has rather quietly put in a truly amazing body of work (unmatched in many key ways by any other back in his era) and we have to stand back, look at it, and acknowledge that he was the key factor in all of those seasons. You give the man the ball, and he gets yards. Year in, year out. I really don't believe he gets the respect and appreciation he's earned here in Green Bay.
I'd be interested in the statistics just for Green's time with the Packers. The Seattle and Houston years are going to bring his averages down.
To my mind, Green was the better back. He could go the distance, and he could plow through the line and get that crucial three yards (unless he was tripped by one of his own guards). After he stopped wearing those forearm pads, he quit fumbling so much, too. If Aaron Jones had Green's size, he'd be Ahman Green but with better receiving skills. Both really good backs, but to my mind Green was much better. In fact, one of the best Packer running backs ever. Ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWLuCbobQtc
Ahman Green was freaky deaky and one of the most talented Packers ever.
Damn why you gotta chop down Frozen’s big post with little facts like that? :lol:
I didn’t even think about the Seattle years. Yep take out the 2 Seattle years and his last three after he left GB and it changes a lot. If we go just by the Packers stats it might get ugly.
Green Averaged over a 1000 yards a season during his time in Green Bay, he had 54 rushing touchdowns in 8 seasons along with 350 receptions and another 15 touchdowns. He only played in 5 games in 2005, and was brought back in 2009 and never started a game for GB.
2003 he pretty much put the team on his back when Favre broke his thumb and rushed them into the playoffs.
Green shouldn't just be considered one of the best ever in Green Bay, but should get recognition as one of the top 15-20 backs of all time in the NFL. Green is the all time leading rusher for GB, he is considered the 2nd best running back in the history of the Packers. I would say Jones is invited to the party, and even say he is securely in the top 5.
If you want to compare them in their 6 prime years in Green Bay Green has over 8000 yards rushing vs 5500 for Jones. Jones did lead the league in 2019 with 16 rushing TDs, Green had 15 in 2003. 320 receptions for Green vs 263 for Jones.
Translation - Just like when you get stuck babysitting your bad behaving little nephew.. but you are an even bigger asshole :lol:
https://images7.memedroid.com/images...7f4c1f6e9.jpeg
Jones is an amazing running back. I'm sad to see him leave. I understand why the Packers moved on.
All three of those things can be true.
There's a fourth thing that may be equally true... it could be that the main reason he left was not because he felt dissed, or that he was greedy - it could be that he hears his clock ticking a lot more loudly than we can hear it, and realizes there's a good chance this is going to be his last "payday" contract. It's possible that he thinks however much guaranteed money he makes on this contract is the last money he ever makes in the NFL, and just couple million more dollars is all the bottom line he needs to know.
I've loved the guy and respected him too long to not give him the benefit of the doubt at this stage. I just wish him well, and hope he piles up 17 straight 100 yard games as the Vikings crash and burn their way to a 4-13 record (sweeping both the Bears and the Lions). He was a dedicated Packer who bled green and gold until the day the Packers told him they didn't want to pay him what he asked, and which point he owed the team nothing.
I have to say, though, that he may have outsmarted himself. The Vikings might just wear him out with 20-25 carries a game, whereas if he had stayed here and tandemed with Jacobs, he might have stretched his career out another season as a rotational back.
Green was the better back. Jones has been the best back since Green. Maybe Jacobs changes that.
Several Packer reporters have stated that Jones aggravated his hammy again on his last carry against the 49ers, and it was serious enough that there was some doubt about if he would have been available a week later if the Packers had won.
This likely influenced their negotiations with him.
I heard that too, I think it was the JSO reporters. That all sounds like speculation, but if his legs are fragile at this point they aren't going to get much better... and even with an offseason to heal, how long would he stay healthy?
And that is the downside. I loved the guy, I had hoped they'd bring him back, but I understand that his availability was an issue. It was a fairy-tale story that he was hurt so much during the season, then got healthy at the end and at times put the team on his back in the playoffs. Or at least was the reason Love had so many open receivers. But next year, he could be healthy the first eight games, but miss the rest of the season. Not such a fairy tale there.
I love Aaron Jones, but I understand why they did what they did.
HOW MANY GAMES over the past 5 YEARS did Aaron Jones and Josh Jacobs miss due to injuries ?
thats an interesting "leak" that the team put out about an injury that the vikings saw no problem with
almost seemed like the packers saw that the fans weren't too happy about the release, and decided to put this little nugget into the ears of the reporters that are basically on the team payroll
gutey might do a fine job at building a team, but he sure seems like a complete piece of shit the way he handles things