Josh Jacobs resolved his legal situation. His football situation is nowhere close to resolved.
The Packers running back pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of battery and criminal damage to property during an appearance in Brown County Court in Wisconsin. He was convicted on the battery charge and fined $1,000. The court accepted a deferred judgment agreement on the criminal damage to property charge.
A $1,000 fine is not a meaningful financial penalty for an NFL starting running back. The meaningful penalty is coming from a different direction.
The League Has Not Moved Yet
Jacobs remains on the Commissioner’s Exempt list, and the NFL has said there is “no timetable” for any disciplinary decision. That phrasing is deliberate. It gives the league room to take as long as it wants while the personal conduct policy review runs its course.
The exempt list means Jacobs is being paid but cannot practice or play. For Green Bay, that is the worst of both worlds: the cap hit stays on the books while the production sits at zero.
The Plea Complicates Green Bay’s Planning
A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt in the legal sense, but it functions as a conviction on the battery charge. The NFL’s personal conduct policy does not require a conviction to impose discipline, and a conviction makes the league’s job considerably easier.
The realistic range for a first-time offense of this type has historically been somewhere between two and six games. The uncertainty is the problem. The Packers cannot make a roster decision until they know whether they are missing Jacobs for a month or for most of the season.
What Green Bay Loses
Jacobs has been the engine of this offense since arriving in Green Bay. He is a volume back who stays on the field for all three downs, handles pass protection, and gives the Packers the ability to control a game with the run when the passing game is not clicking.
Replacing that by committee is possible. Replacing it well is difficult, and the NFC North is not a division where teams get to be average at running the football and still win.
The Bigger Point
The legal system moved relatively fast here. The league, as usual, is taking its time, which produces the awkward situation where a player has been through court, accepted a penalty, and still has no idea when he is allowed to work again.
There are reasonable arguments for the NFL conducting its own review rather than deferring to prosecutors. There is not a good argument for an open-ended timeline that leaves a team, a player and a fan base guessing in the middle of a season.
Green Bay needs an answer. So does Jacobs. Neither is likely to get one soon.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.