The Green Bay Packers’ running game is going to be a bit of a mystery box going into the 2026 regular season. Not only is starting running back Josh Jacobs on the commissioner exempt list, but the players who will backfill Jacobs’ carries have never been significant ball-carriers at the NFL level, and the Packers’ offensive line is in a bit of a transition. If you missed the news this summer, let’s catch you up on what’s going on with Green Bay’s run game.
Josh Jacobs
First of all, the reason that MarShawn Lloyd
is likely to be the Packers’ top ball-carrier to start the year is that Jacobs has been charged with battery and criminal damage to property in an incident that involved his girlfriend. This alleged incident occurred in May, but Jacobs wasn’t officially charged by Brown County until August 27th, as the district attorney’s office waited to make a judgment until they received a surveillance video and passed it through a digital forensic examination report, which “was complex and took several weeks.”
As of now, Jacobs is on the commissioner exempt list, which means that he is allowed to attend meetings in the facility — which the team has confirmed he is doing — but is not allowed to practice or play for the Packers until he’s taken off the list. Currently, there is no timetable for when Jacobs’ situation will be resolved. An initial hearing, not a sentencing, is scheduled for Jacobs’ case on November 17th. The Packers have said they will let the legal process play out.
Josh Jacobs’ replacements
At the moment, the Packers are carrying three running backs on the 53-man roster, since Jacobs is on the exempt list: MarShawn Lloyd, Kaleb Johnson and Chris Brooks.
Lloyd has played 10 regular-season snaps (all from one game) going into Year 3 of his pro career, as he’s dealt with a series of unfortunate injuries after being picked in the third round by the Packers back in 2024. At the moment, he’s expected to be Green Bay’s top ball-carrier going into the 2026 season, at least until Jacobs returns (if he does return).
Backing him up are Johnson, a 2025 third-round pick who was traded from the Pittsburgh Steelers to the Packers at the cutdown deadline for a 2028 sixth-round pick, and Brooks. Johnson averaged 2.8 carries per game as a rookie for the Steelers last year. For what it’s worth, Johnson also played under offensive coordinator Tim Lester, a former analyst under head coach Matt LaFleur, at the University of Iowa. Brooks is more of a blocking back than a ball-carrier, as he’s carried the ball on just 16 percent of the offensive plays that he’s been on the field for (63 of 387) over the last two regular seasons. Books has averaged about two carries per game in Green Bay.
The scheme transition
The biggest difference between the Packers’ offense in the preseason and what we’ve seen in recent years is that the team leaned into the outside/mid zone scheme much more heavily this summer. It appears that the offense is transitioning back into what it looked like in the earlier LaFleur years, where they were asking their linemen to make more athletic plays in space, rather than just trying to get vertical displacement on inside runs.
You can see how frequently Green Bay ran stretch plays, a LaFleur staple when he had Aaron Jones in the backfield instead of Jacobs, with Lloyd in the clip linked above.
We’ve mentioned that this is a possibility, as it stuck out like a sore thumb in the preseason. Over the last week, both LaFleur and general manager Brian Gutekunst have mentioned the team leaning into “outside zone stuff” in press conferences. This should also improve the play-action game, as the Packers pair their naked bootlegs with outside zone runs, something that hasn’t really been a big part of Green Bay’s offense since Jacobs arrived.
The offensive line
At the moment, the expectation right now is that the team’s starting offensive line will be Jordan Morgan, Aaron Banks, Sean Rhyan, Jacob Monk and Zach Bako-Bewele (formerly Tom) from left to right. With that being said, both Banks (tendinitis) and Bako-Bewele (post-surgery from a partially torn patellar tendon) are dealing with knee injuries that have limited their participation throughout training camp.
According to LaFleur, it’s not clear whether or not Bank or Bako-Bewele can play 60-minute football games right now, so their status going into Week 1 of the regular season is very much up in the air. If they can’t go against the Minnesota Vikings, the expected Banks replacement would be fifth-round rookie Jager Burton, and the expected Bako-Bewele replacement would be second-year second-round pick Anthony Belton.
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With all of this laid out, how do you think the Packers’ running game will fare this regular season? Let us know your prediction in the comments section.
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