Coming off the worst season of his NFL career, one during which he missed four games for the Las Vegas Raiders and rushed for a career-low 805 yards, Josh Jacobs has had a strong bounce-back campaign in his first year with the Green Bay Packers.
Through the same 13 games he played a season ago, the sixth-year veteran has already hit the 1,000-yard mark for the fourth time, rushing for 1,053 yards while averaging a solid 4.4 yards per carry with 11 touchdowns, seven of which have come in the last three weeks.
Jacobs has also added another 260 yards on 27 receptions and even notched the first-ever receiving touchdown of his career back in Week 7 in Green Bay’s 24-22 victory over the Houston Texans.
So, again, he’s having a solid first season in a Packers uniform. And if he can maintain his production or up it ever so slightly over the final four weeks of the regular season, Jacobs will join a pair of Packers in an exclusive club.
Josh Jacobs could become just the third Packers running back to finish in the top three in rushing yards since the 1970 merger
Since the NFL was founded in 1920, only one Green Bay Packers player has ever led the league in rushing yards, that honor belonging to the legendary Jim Taylor, who ran for a career-high 1,474 yards in 1962 en route to winning NFL MVP.
Green Bay also won its second consecutive and eighth overall NFL Championship that season.
Since then, no Green Bay back has won the rushing title. And since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, only two Packers have even finished in the top three.
In 1971, John Brockington rushed for 1,105 yards en route to winning Offensive Rookie of the Year, trailing only Floyd Little, who ran for 1,133 yards for the Denver Broncos. Brockington also finished second in 1973, but it was a distant second as O.J. Simpson recorded the first 2,000-yard season in NFL history, rushing for 2,003 yards with the Buffalo Bills to earn MVP honors.
In 2003, Ahman Green set the Packers’ single-season rushing record with 1,883 yards but still finished second to Jamal Lewis, who amassed 2,066 yards on the ground for the Baltimore Ravens.
And that’s it.
Heading into Green Bay’s Week 15 matchup with the Seattle Seahawks, Jacobs has accrued the fourth-most rushing yards this season, trailing only Saquon Barkley (1,623) of the Philadelphia Eagles, Derrick Henry (1,407) of the Baltimore Ravens, and Kyren Williams 1,121) of the Los Angeles Rams.
It needs to be noted, of course, that Williams has already played his Week 15 game, rushing for 108 yards in the Rams’ 12-6 victory over the San Francisco 49ers on Thursday night.
Jacobs isn’t catching Barkley or Henry, so he’ll be battling Williams for the No. 3 spot down the stretch, and Jahmyr Gibbs (1,016) of the Detroit Lions and Chuba Hubbard (1,011) are in the mix as well.
That said, Jacobs currently owns the highest average among these four backs at 81.0 yards per game, with Williams at 80.1, Gibbs at 78.2, and Hubbard at 77.8.
So, if things hold over these next four weeks, Jacobs will join Brockington and Green in the exclusive club of Packers to finish in the top three in rushing.
