MarShawn Lloyd, the Packers running back who waited two years for a job he may not keep

MarShawn Lloyd

Photo: Gamecock Central / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	January 5, 2001
Occupation	Footballer

For two seasons MarShawn Lloyd was the Green Bay Packers running back everyone talked about and almost nobody saw. The speed that made him an intriguing draft pick lived in practice clips and preseason snaps, while his Sundays were spent on the injury report. This autumn he finally got the ball, and not on his own terms: the starting job came to him because Josh Jacobs could not play. What he has done with it, the weakest yards per carry in the Green Bay backfield alongside the most replayed run of the Packers’ season, makes him a hard player to settle on. The time to decide has arrived.

The commute came before the fame. Lloyd grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, and traveled every day across the state line to attend DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Maryland. He left DeMatha as a five-star recruit and a selection for the Under Armour All-America Game, the kind of prospect head coaches visit in person, and he chose the University of South Carolina.

His college career opened with a setback that previewed the professional one. Lloyd, born on January 5, 2001, tore his ACL before his first season at South Carolina and missed all of 2020. He returned as a backup in 2021, carrying 64 times for 228 yards, and took over the starting job in 2022, leading the Gamecocks with 573 rushing yards and nine touchdowns on 111 carries while catching 18 passes. In January 2023 he announced his transfer to USC.

Los Angeles showed what the recruiting rankings had seen. In an offense built around quarterback Caleb Williams, Lloyd ran for 820 yards and nine touchdowns on only 116 carries in 2023, an average of 7.1 yards a run, and caught 13 passes for 232 yards. He was never a workhorse; he carried the ball more than 15 times in a game just three times in college. At the NFL Scouting Combine he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.46 seconds, speed that stands out on a back built low to the ground at five foot nine and 220 pounds.

Green Bay took him in the third round of the 2024 NFL Draft, 88th overall, to learn behind Jacobs, signed that spring. A hamstring problem slowed his first training camp. He made his NFL debut on September 15, 2024, against the Indianapolis Colts at Lambeau Field, carried six times for 15 yards, caught one pass for three and left with a high-ankle sprain. Two days later he was on injured reserve. In November, as he was about to return, appendicitis sent him into emergency surgery and onto the non-football illness list, and his rookie season was over.

The second year never started. A groin injury in July gave way to another hamstring injury in the preseason, and the Packers placed him on injured reserve on August 26, 2025. When his return window opened in December he began practicing again, then hurt the hamstring once more. Green Bay activated him on December 17 as a procedural move and put him back on injured reserve two days later. One regular-season game in two years: that was the whole record.

The label that followed him, injury-prone, is only half fair. An appendix is bad luck, and an ankle sprain in a rookie’s first real game is football. The hamstrings are a pattern, though, and a pattern is exactly what a team weighs when it decides how many carries to trust to a player. This season has added a second doubt to the first. Through five games Lloyd led the Packers with 112 rushing yards, but on 40 carries, 2.8 yards per attempt, for one of the two least productive running games in the league. Kaleb Johnson and Chris Brooks, running behind the same line, averaged more per carry, and analysts pointed to his low yards after contact and to runs that never found the space the blocking had opened. In the overtime win over the New York Jets he lost a fourth-quarter fumble at his own 19-yard line. Rust explains some of it. It does not explain all of it.

The job itself arrived through someone else’s trouble. In late August the NFL placed Jacobs on the commissioner’s exempt list after he was charged with two misdemeanors stemming from a May altercation with his then-girlfriend, to which he later pleaded no contest. Lloyd, who calls Jacobs “a brother forever,” went into the opener as the lead back with six career carries. General manager Brian Gutekunst called him “as ready as he’s ever been since he’s been here.” Lloyd kept his own plan simple: “Don’t do too much, just be you.” In camp he had celebrated a touchdown catch with a backflip, something he has done since he was six, and coach Matt LaFleur walked over to ask him to stop. “If he says it’s over, it’s over,” Lloyd said.

The answer to the doubters came on October 11 against the Chicago Bears. On a seven-yard run in a 31–7 win at Lambeau Field, Lloyd lowered his shoulder into cornerback Jaylon Johnson, knocked him to the turf and kept going into the end zone. It was his first rushing touchdown in the NFL, and he added a second before the afternoon was over. “We watched that clip of his touchdown run so many times,” quarterback Jordan Love said. “You’ve got to run behind your pads.” Lloyd, whose first NFL touchdown had been a six-yard catch against the Jets, said family and friends kept sending him the video. “You do it once,” he said, “but the good ones do it multiple times.”

He is still learning in public. He has talked about a video of Indianapolis Colts running back Jonathan Taylor and the line he took from it: “The best cut is no cut.” It is advice about hitting the hole without hesitation, and it is the lesson his season numbers say he needs most. He will need it quickly. The NFL announced on October 16 that Jacobs would come off the exempt list on October 19 and be eligible for the Packers’ Week 7 game on October 25, with the league’s own review of the case still open.

Green Bay drafted Lloyd for the moments when his speed changes a game, and spent two years waiting for him to be on the field long enough to produce them. With Jacobs back, the Packers will find out how many of those moments they are still prepared to wait for.

Tags: sports, athletes, American football, running backs, Green Bay Packers, Jordan Love, MarShawn Lloyd