A throw from the Green Bay Packers’ season-opening win over the Chicago Bears helped convince free agent running back Josh Jacobs to join Jordan Love and the Packers this offseason.
Jacobs told Jori Epstein of Yahoo Sports that Love’s fadeaway throwback to Aaron Jones during a Week 1 win over the Bears impressed him during a team meeting with the Raiders and stuck with him as he was picking a new team in free agency.
“I remember the play like it was yesterday,” Jacobs told Epstein. “He threw it on the numbers fading away on one leg. It was on the money, like a dart. [I thought,] ‘Yeah, bro. He got it.”
Jacobs had no shortage of suitors in free agency, but he wanted to play with a special quarterback. And Jacobs sees special in Love.
The completion — which ended up gaining 51 yards on a catch-and-run from Jones — might not rank among Love’s top 10 throws of the 2023 season. But the play was special in its own right, and it certainly caught Jacobs’ attention. Rolling out to his left, Love spun around past one hash and made a fadeaway throw back past the other hash to his right. While in the face of a pass-rusher and throwing off one leg, the pass was almost perfect, and Jones had an easy time making the catch and rumbling for a game-changing play.
When the Packers hit up Josh Jacobs in free agency, he thought back to this clip—and what it’d mean to play with Jordan Love.
“You only really see Mahomes do that,” Josh told me. “So I’m like, ‘Man, he has the potential to be special.’
“Yeah, bro. He got it.” pic.twitter.com/aCvwVbxGgU
— Jori Epstein (@JoriEpstein) July 24, 2024
Jacobs said he saw the play while the Raiders were preparing to play Love and the Packers in October. From that point on, Jacobs kept tabs on both Love and the Packers — and both the quarterback and the young team came alive as a contender during the second half of the 2023 season.
“They started to progress and started to get better and better. I was like, ‘Yeah — this dude is going to be good,'” Jacobs said.
Now, Jacobs doesn’t have to just watch Love from a meeting room. The 2022 rushing champ gets to play alongside him — potentially creating one of the best quarterback-running back duos in football.
This story is a good reminder: NFL players are always watching, and the power of a potentially special quarterback is enormous.