Packers Star Josh Jacobs Scores Twice vs. Panthers but Can’t Find Room to Run

Josh Jacobs runs like a man who believes the wall gives way if he hits it often enough. Against the Carolina Panthers at Lambeau Field, the wall mostly held. He scored twice anyway, once by putting his shoulder through a pile at the goal line and once by holding on to the kind of short pass that had slipped through his hands a week earlier.

Most of the coverage filed his night under Jordan Love‘s passing and a defense that kept knocking Bryce Young down, with Jacobs as a footnote or a line in the losers column. Both readings miss what his comeback looks like so far. The finishing has survived everything that happened to him this year. The running room has not, and the league has not finished with him.

The catch that answered Detroit

Start with the hands. At Detroit, in his first game of the season, Jacobs dropped what Field Level Media called an almost certain touchdown pass late in the fourth quarter. The field goal that followed was deflected, and the Lions won on the final play. A running back hears about a drop like that all week.

On Thursday he scored the first touchdown the hard way, bulldozing in from a yard out to put Green Bay ahead not long after Christian Watson had left for the hospital in an ambulance. The second came midway through the third quarter: Love found him from four yards out, and the Packers led by 17. He did not drop that one.

The yards that never came

Then there is the rest of his night. Jacobs carried 21 times for 39 yards, 1.9 per attempt, and caught six passes for 13 more. Carolina had arrived giving up a league-worst 153.2 rushing yards a game, a week after Tampa Bay ran over it for 258. If any defense was going to give him daylight, it was this one. Chuba Hubbard, on the other sideline, found 81 yards on 22 carries behind a Carolina line that was also missing starters.

Blaming Jacobs alone would be lazy. Green Bay came in without center Sean Rhyan, out with a high ankle sprain; backup center Jacob Monk had gone on injured reserve, and journeyman Mekhi Becton Sr. was promoted from the practice squad. The Packers rank last in the NFL in rushing yards. Love said before the game that if they want to be the team they want to be, “we’ve definitely got to improve in the run game.”

That leaves the trait that defined Jacobs before any of this. Last season he scored 13 touchdowns while rushing for 929 yards, a strong return on modest production. In 2024, his first year in Green Bay, he ran for 1,329 yards and 15 scores and made the Pro Bowl. With the Raiders in 2022 he led the league with 1,653 yards. The yards have come and gone over the years. The touchdowns have kept coming.

The case he brought back with him

He missed the first six games on the commissioner’s exempt list. Jacobs was arrested in May after an altercation with his then-girlfriend and pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of battery and criminal damage to property. His lawyers said he “accepts responsibility for his actions.” The Associated Press reported that the NFL’s investigation under its personal conduct policy continues, and ProFootballTalk notes he remains subject to a potential unpaid suspension.

The celebration put all of that back on screen. After one of his touchdowns, Jacobs put his hands behind his back, and many viewers read the gesture as a mime of handcuffs. He denied it. He said he had planned the routine with teammate Savion Williams, that it was inspired by the gospel song “Break Every Chain,” and that the broadcast showed only a second of it. “The media is gonna run with it,” he said. “They’re gonna make it something that it wasn’t.”

What comes next for Jacobs and the Packers

Green Bay won 27-19 to move to 5-3, its fourth win in five games, and visits the New England Patriots next. Carolina fell to 3-4 and hosts the Denver Broncos, still leading the NFC South. For Jacobs, the schedule matters less than the league office, where the conduct review that could take him off the field again is still open.

Two games into his return, he has found the end zone and lost the room to run. The next thing that decides his season is a ruling from the league office, and no stiff-arm moves one of those.

Tags: running backs, Green Bay Packers, Jordan Love, Josh Jacobs, Carolina Panthers