There’s been a lot of digital ink spilled in the running back room in Green Bay this offseason. None of last year’s primary running backs will be playing this year, whether due to a layoff (Aaron Jones) or injury (AJ Dillon). They signed Josh Jacobs as a free agent, and it looks like he’ll be getting the bulk of the carries. Rookie MarShawn Lloyd and second-year player Emanuel Wilson will also be in the mix, but this seems like The Josh Jacobs Show.

Today, we’re focusing on a key component of a successful running back: pass protection. Yes, a running back needs to be effective to be useful on a down-to-down basis, but it can be difficult to run an offense effectively with a running back who is poor at pass pro. You only have to look back to the 2023 Wild Card win over the Cowboys to see how much it helps to have a running back who excels at pass pro.

Granted, the bar may be high, but it’s a nice reminder of the highlights.

We’re going to focus on what Josh Jacobs looked like as a pass pro in the second half of 2023. It’s a small sample size, but there’s a reason I did this. I wanted to see what he did in his most recent season, because reps from 3 years ago might not reflect who he is at this point in his career.

The Raiders’ offense, however, was a mess in the first half of the year, for Josh McDaniels’ reasons. If most of the offense was out of whack, would those reps tell me much? I decided they probably wouldn’t, so I started with Week 9. That’s when Antonio Pierce took over as head coach, and the team as a whole seemed to be playing with a bit more fire than it had under McDaniels.

The PFF grade seems to reflect that as well. Under McDaniels, Jacobs had a 56.2 pass block grade. Under Pierce, he had a 60.4 pass block grade. Normal caveats with PFF grades and small sample sizes and all that, but I felt like we should at least bring it up.

It should be noted that while 60.4 is better than 56.2 (MATH!), it’s still not a great grade. Did what I see reflect that? Let’s dive in.

Let’s start with the good. Jacobs has been in the league for 5 years and he clearly knows what to do in pass pro. We’ll get to that later, but that’s huge. Whether he’s reading inside-out or chipping to the rim, he reads what the defense is doing and is in the right spot.

As you can see in some of those reps, he can also put some muscle in. That’s encouraging and certainly gives you something to dream about. However, there are many more clips where this kind of thing doesn’t happen.

There’s a passivity to this part of his game that shows up more often than you’d like to see. It doesn’t always bite him, but with inconsistent effort you’ll definitely see a rusher get around him with little effort every now and then.

The misses you see are usually a result of some of that passivity. He’s where he needs to be, but he’s not quite in the right position because he just wants to lean a little bit. If a defender can get around that passive pass pro, bad things can happen. It’s ridiculous how many times I’ve said “stick your nose in there” when I’ve seen Jacobs in pass pro.

I don’t want to sugarcoat it: most of his film was bad in terms of results. But there is one bright spot, and that is something I mentioned above: Jacobs knows where he needs to be. His problem is not that he doesn’t know the assignment: there is sometimes just a passivity in the approach. That is technique and dedication, not knowledge. That is coachable.

The optimist in me believes that with this current Packers team, we’ll see more dedication to the pass pro portion of Jacobs’ game than we saw last year in a scrappy Raiders situation. If they can fine-tune that portion of his game, I believe he has what it takes to be a successful back in pass protection.

Albums listened to: Sabrina Carpenter – Short and sweet; Gillian Welch and David Rawlings – Bunch; Destroying pumpkins – Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness