Josh Jacobs’ criminal case is essentially over. His NFL case is just getting started, and that is the one that will decide his season.
Jacobs pleaded no contest on Thursday to misdemeanor battery and misdemeanor criminal damage to property, charges that came out of a May 23 incident involving his former girlfriend. The Brown County District Attorney had already reduced the original filing down to those two misdemeanors.
The legal outcome is light. Jacobs will be fined $1,000 on the battery count. On the criminal damage charge, the court will suspend proceedings for 12 months and then dismiss it if he completes the terms of his agreement with prosecutors.
Those terms are not nothing. No further criminal acts, no contact with the victim, supervision, counseling, and restitution. Complete all of that and the second charge disappears a year from now.
What sticks is the underlying allegation. The complaint said Jacobs grabbed the woman and threw her to the ground, causing injury. A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt in the technical sense, but it is a decision to stop contesting the facts, and everyone reading it understands the difference is mostly for lawyers.
To his credit, Jacobs did not hide behind that distinction. He said he takes full responsibility. That is the right thing to say and it is also the only thing he could say with a supervision agreement hanging over him.
Now the part Packers fans actually care about. Jacobs has been on the commissioner exempt list since last month, which means paid leave. He cannot practice, he cannot play, and he does not count against the 53-man roster. The NFL has said its personal conduct policy review remains open, with no timeline attached.
Green Bay is in limbo, and that is the worst possible spot for a team whose offense runs through its backfield. Jacobs has been Green Bay’s clear lead back and the engine of its short-yardage and red zone work. You do not replace a workload like that on a week of notice.
My read is that a suspension is coming, and the resolution of the criminal case is what unlocks it. The league almost always waits for the courts, then acts. Six games is the baseline starting point under the personal conduct policy for cases involving violence, and the league has gone shorter when the criminal outcome was this light and the player cooperated.
My guess is something in the four to six game range, with credit for the time he has already missed on the exempt list being the thing Jacobs’ camp fights hardest for. The league has granted that before and it is the difference between getting him back in October versus November.
For Green Bay, the planning has to assume the worst. Build an offense that does not need him, get the young backs real volume now while the games still count for seeding, and treat his return as an upgrade rather than a rescue.
And honestly, the football piece is the least important thread here. A woman was thrown to the ground. Jacobs paid a $1,000 fine and agreed to counseling. Whatever the NFL decides, the league’s discipline is the only part of this that will carry any real weight, and it is now on Roger Goodell to make it mean something.
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.
