DETROIT – Running back Josh Jacobs will make his season debut on Sunday for the Green Bay Packers. He will be a critical addition for an offense that has been unable to run the ball at any point this season.

Heck, to say he’ll be a season-changing addition wouldn’t be hyperbole. The Packers are 4-2 with a three-game winning streak despite an offense as unbalanced as a teeter-totter with a ton of brick cheese on one end and a tablespoon of parmesan cheese on the other.

The Packers are last in the league in rushing with 59.8 yards per game and 2.97 yards per carry; Dallas is 31st with 76.0 rushing yards per game and Las Vegas is 31st with 3.03 yards per carry.

They are last in the league with 2.3 yards per carry on first down; Las Vegas is 31st with 2.8.

They are last in the league with 23 first downs gained on running plays; Las Vegas is 31st with 26.

They are 31st in average yards before contact and last in average yards after contact.

Jacobs will solve a lot of those problems with his vision, power and ability to fall forward to maximize every rushing attempt.

“He just has a different kind of juice to him,” center Sean Rhyan said. “Different vision, dawg. Can’t really ask for much more than for him to come back, and he’s coming back. So, we’re excited. Still going to block our plays as well as we can and go from there.”

Goldilocks LaFleur

However, coach Matt LaFleur has to be careful not to change the offense too drastically with the addition of a game-changing running back. In 2024, when Jacobs was a Pro Bowler in his debut season, they ran the ball on the third-highest percentage of plays. Last year, it was the fifth-highest percentage.

After being about a 50-50 split the last two years, the Packers are 30th with a run rate of 34.4 percent. To be sure, the Packers need to be more balanced.

But they don’t need to veer into the run-first attack of the past two seasons. Jordan Love has been too good to forget why the Packers have overcome the odds to be 4-2 despite a multitude of challenges ranging from dropped passes to players dropping out with injuries.

The trick will be for LaFleur to find his inner Goldilocks.

Love is a mediocre 15th in passer rating, though that number doesn’t paint an accurate portrait of his performance. According to Pro Football Focus, Love has had eight more passes dropped than any other quarterback. According to Next Gen Stats, he’s faced the third-most pressures.

However, he threw for 367 yards and two touchdowns in a blowout win over Chicago and would have blown past 300 yards and thrown at least three touchdown passes last week against Dallas without the drops.

Love is good enough to carry the offense if he gets enough help from his friends.

The addition of Jacobs would make life easier, though. Jacobs doesn’t need to run for 1,000 yards the next 11 games. He just needs to give the Packers a real rushing attack and keep them in favorable down-and-distance situations. 

Last season, the Packers averaged 4.1 yards per first-down carry, or not far from double this year’s 2.3 average. What a difference it would make for Love to face second-and-5, second-and-6 or second-and-7 instead of second-and-8, second-and-10 or second-and-worse.

Second-and-shorter means third-and-shorter. The Packers’ average third-down conversion requires 7.6 yards, which ranks 22nd. They’ve faced the fifth-most snaps of third-and-10 or longer. No wonder they were last in the league on third down before last week’s victory over Dallas before surging to a lofty 24th now at 35.5 percent.

On third-and-10 or longer, they’ve converted 23.1 percent of the time. On third-and-6 or shorter, they’ve converted 47.5 percent of the time.

And then there’s the passing game. Even with no rushing attack, Love dropped a series of play-action bombs on the Bears two weeks ago. The Cowboys, however, weren’t taking the bait last week. Love had seven play-action dropbacks and was just 1-of-6 passing for 7 yards with one sack.

Teams will ignore the Packers’ running game with Jacobs in the lineup at their own peril. The Packers’ superpower on offense is Love going downfield to Christian Watson and Matthew Golden. More favorable down-and-distance situations and a real play-action attack will give them opportunities to make big plays.

The final area where Jacobs can help the Packers win is when it’s time to close out games. There will come a time when they’re going to have to run out the final few minutes. So far, the Packers are averaging 1.1 yards per carry in the fourth quarter. That’s a full yard worse than any other team.

Give the Ball to Jordan Love

Overall, though, after playing with training wheels with Aaron Jones in 2023 and Jacobs in 2024 and 2025, Love has earned the right to have the offense run through him. Jacobs should be the player in the supporting role and not the other way around.

“We’ve done some good things in the passing game, and it definitely helped us when our run game hasn’t been up to the standard that it has in the past,” Love said this week. “So, yeah, I think nothing will change. I think we’ll continue to lean on that.

QB1 pic.twitter.com/fLqs5VpYyF

— Bill Huber (@BillHuberNFL) October 25, 2026

“We’ll give Josh as many touches as he needs. Try to get him rolling. Obviously, first game back for him, he’s missed a lot of time, so it’s one of those things we’ll see. And I think Josh, he’s also a big factor in the pass game, as well, catching checkdowns, catching screens, things like that. So, yeah, he’ll have a huge impact on us, but I think still got to keep the game plan, the mindset of what we’ve been doing, just stay with it.”

ICYMI, here's our weekly dynamic duo of stories.

3⃣ reasons why the Packers will beat the Lions, including the ultimate mismatch:https://t.co/h8WIsYokyn

and 3⃣ reasons why the Packers will lose: https://t.co/Sd7uU1mQYv

— Bill Huber (@BillHuberNFL) October 25, 2026