Josh Jacobs’ 6-yard touchdown run for the Green Bay Packers in Monday night’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles moved him past two Pro Football Hall of Fame running backs to the top of an NFL list.
The former Alabama ball-carrier extended his streak of prime-time games with a rushing touchdown to eight. That’s the longest of the NFL’s AFC/NFC era as Jacobs moved past the seven-game streaks of Terrell Davis and Emmitt Smith.
Scoring and streaking with the football in his hands are not new for Jacobs.
Monday night’s touchdown gave Jacobs 72 scores on the ground in his 99 NFL regular-season games. He’s the ninth player in the leagues’ AFC/NFC era with at least 72 rushing touchdowns in his first 99 contests. Jacobs is the third Alabama alumnus to accomplish the feat. Shaun Alexander had 91 rushing touchdowns in his first 99 NFL regular-season games, and Derrick Henry scored 76.
In the Packers’ 27-18 victory over the Washington Commanders on Sept 11, Jacobs became the 10th player in the AFC/NFC era to score a rushing touchdown in 10 consecutive regular-season games.
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Jacobs’ 11th rushing touchdown in nine games this season marked Green Bay’s only appearance in the end zone during a 10-7 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night.
While Jacobs bulled his way into the end zone to cut the Eagles’ 10-point lead to three with 5:49 remaining, his final carry of the game didn’t go as well.
With the Packers facing fourth-and-1 at their 44-yard line with 90 seconds to play, Green Bay called Jacobs’ number. But the Eagles swarmed the running back for a 4-yard loss, and the play ended with the football in the hands of Philadelphia safety Reed Blankenship. (It wouldn’t have mattered, though, if Jacobs had converted and held on to the football because the Packers had an illegal-formation penalty on the play.)
But Jacobs was concerned the Philadelphia defense knew what was coming on the crucial call.
“Fourth-and-1, they called out our play,” Jacobs told reporters in the locker room after the game. “We ran it like four times. They called it out. Got good drive push. The clock was going out. We kind of snapped it fast, faster than we wanted to, and they made a play.
“I tried to pitch the ball back to (quarterback) Jordan (Love), where the fumble came in. But, you know, at that point, you playing backyard football. It’s fourth down. So, yeah, that’s kind of how it went.”
Jacobs said because he knew the Eagles knew what the Packers were about to do, he ran the play differently than he normally would.
“As a runner, it don’t never feel good,” Jacobs said. “I mean, whenever they know what we doing, it don’t never feel good because it changed my mind on how I’m going to run the ball, if we just being honest. It makes me kind of, like, guess what I’m going to do. And, obviously, you know, people are smart. If we got code words or whatever, you hear it a few times, like, you going to eventually react to it. I mean, that’s football. But, yeah, I mean, it’s never a good feeling. …
“I mean, they called it out. We called our play. They said inside zone, it’s coming right here, so I kind of, like, didn’t want to run right there, you know? But, yeah, that’s just how it played out.”
Green Bay entered Week 9 of the NFL season with the NFC’s best record at 5-1-1 after scoring 129 points in its previous four games. But the Carolina Panthers shocked Green Bay 16-13 on Nov. 2 before Monday night’s loss to Philadelphia.
“I mean, it’s not the end of the world, but it’s also some problems we got to address,” Jacobs said. “We midway through the season. We can’t just keep saying, ‘All right, we going to address it.’ We got to find actual answers to our problems. And I don’t really honestly know what those answers is. Feel like everybody got to dig deep, have the belief and give more. I mean, it’s not easy, you know? We can’t live off of what we did last year or nothing like that. Like, we got to be in the moment. And, yeah, it’s definitely not easy.”
The back-to-back losses dropped Green Bay one-half game behind NFC North leaders Detroit and Chicago. The Lions and Bears have 6-3 records. The Packers went from the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoff standings to the final of the seven postseason positions.
The Packers play the New York Giants at noon CST Sunday at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
After that, five of Green Bay’s remaining seven regular-season games will come against division rivals. The Packers started the season by beating the Lions 27-13 on Sept. 7. Green Bay plays in Detroit on Nov. 27 and has two games apiece against Chicago and the Minnesota Vikings left on its schedule.
“We got a special team,” Jacobs said. “I don’t think nobody in this building or in this locker room has given up belief, you know, in each other and in what we can do and what we feel like we could do. It’s not the end of the world. But with that being said, we do have to have a sense of urgency.”
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