Advocating for a change in football rules to limit kickoff returns in order to reduce injuries and preserve the excitement of special teams plays in the game.
GREEN BAY — Life moves pretty fast, as Ferris Bueller once said. Especially during NFL free agency. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss your team changing starting running backs on you.
“It kind of caught me off guard, to be honest with you,” LaFleur confessed during the NFC coaches breakfast Tuesday morning at the annual NFL Meetings at the Ritz-Carlton Grande Lakes resort in Orlando, Fla.
“There were some other things in play, obviously with Aaron Jones, and I didn’t quite know how everything was going to go. It just happened really fast on that Monday.”
After saying on Feb. 1 he “absolutely” expected Jones to return in 2024 despite a $17 million salary-cap number that needed to be reduced, general manager Brian Gutekunst shifted his focus to Jacobs on March 11 after the Packers asked Jones and agent Drew Rosenhaus to take a massive pay cut — one that reportedly would have lowered Jones’ base salary to less than $4 million, a cut of $8 million — and Jones declined.
Asked at the NFL Meetings on Monday why things changed, Gutekunst replied, “We asked him to take a pay cut, and as we went through that process, we kind of realized it wasn’t going to probably come to fruition. Obviously, we had to do what’s in the best interest of the football team — and that’s what we did.”
And while LaFleur is excited about what the ex-Las Vegas Raiders running back will bring to the Packers offense, he said Tuesday he wasn’t part of the fast-moving process that resulted in Jacobs being signed and Jones being cut.
“It happened really fast, so I don’t know all the details of that,” LaFleur said. “I’m not involved in those types of conversations. But we were super excited (to get Jacobs).”
Of course, had LaFleur had his druthers, he probably would have liked to have had both Jacobs and Jones. But Gutekunst indicated the salary-cap cost in 2025 would have been prohibitive.
“We certainly looked at that,” Gutekunst said. “(But) there’s a number of things involved with that — not only what it does to our cap this year, but what it would do to our cap next year. My feeling was that was going to be a little bit too much for us to do.”
Asked how long he’d had his eye on Jacobs, who played the 2023 season with the Raiders on the franchise tag, Gutekunst said that while the personnel department was aware of Jacobs’ potential availability, the Packers didn’t consider him as an option until talks with Jones fell through.
“To be real honest, (it was) not until we got down a certain point with Aaron that we realized that this might be more problematic than we thought that we turned our attention to maybe studying those (other) guys and seeing if that was going to be an opportunity or not,” Gutekunst said.
“We were working towards that solution (with Jones). But sometimes things just don’t work out. (We) don’t blame him at all. He’s always done right by us. Again, it was one of those tough moments. But it was a necessary one for us.”
The third-leading rusher in Packers’ franchise history behind Ahman Green and Jim Taylor, the 29-year-old Jones missed six games and parts of two others with hamstring and knee injuries in 2023, finishing the regular season with 656 yards and two touchdowns on 142 carries (4.6-yard average) but rushing 39 times for 226 yards and three TDs (5.8-yard average) in two playoff games.
In fact, Jones closed the season by doing something no back had ever done in team history: Stringing together five consecutive 100-yard games, including in both postseason games — an NFC wild card win over the Dallas Cowboys and the team’s season-ending NFC divisional loss to the San Francisco 49ers.
The 26-year-old Jacobs, meanwhile, led the NFL in rushing yards (1,653) and total yards from scrimmage (2,053) in 2022 but finished the 2023 season having rushed for 805 yards and gained 1,101 total yards in 13 games, missing the final four games of the season with a quadriceps injury.
Like Raiders coach Antonio Pierce, who said the loss of Jacobs ”hurt” and called Jacobs “the heartbeat, a Raider through and through,” LaFleur admitted his disappointment in losing Jones’ leadership and “veteran presence in the locker room.”
“(Losing Jones) is really tough. Not only the football player, but the man,” LaFleur said, adding that he has challenged quarterback Jordan Love to step into the leadership void while praising Jones for having “always been team first. He walks the walk, and he does everything. He’s just such a pro, (and) that’s always tough to replace.”
That said, LaFleur expressed excitement over what Jacobs can do in his offense. While Jones had 963 carries and 1,200 total touches over the past five seasons, Jacobs has been more of a workhorse back, getting 1,305 carries and 1,502 total touches.
“He is tough, hard-nosed. He can be a high-volume guy,” LaFleur said. “In studying him, I think there’s more out there for him in the passing game.
“I love the person, just being around him in that brief time when he came into Green Bay. You can just see the kind of person he is. I’m really excited about his style of play.”
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Running back Aaron Jones celebrates with Packers coach Matt LaFleur after scoring a 3-yard touchdown during the Nov. 5 win over the Rams at Lambeau Field. Jones spent the first seven seasons of his NFL career with the Packers, five of them with LaFleur running the show.