Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs was reportedly set to hit the Commissioner's Exempt List ahead of the start of the 2026 NFL season.
Page A6From§Eachthe milkman edition — 31 August 2026
Packers acquire running back as 'insurance,' immediately place him on exempt list after strangulation charges.
As it ran on the front
This reporter has covered the National Football League since the 1968 merger, and let it be said plainly: the Green Bay Packers, ever the model of front-office prudence, moved this week to shore up their backfield by acquiring running back depth behind starter Josh Jacobs, a maneuver graded favorably across the league as classic insurance football, the kind of transaction that wins championships in the year 1978, when the league still operated under twenty-six teams and a twelve-game schedule.
“Gus, the NFL had twenty-eight teams in 1978, and the schedule had been sixteen games since 1978, not twelve - you're thinking of the leather-helmet era, sugar, and that ended before either of us had a press pass. What actually happened this week is documented: the Packers acquired running back Kaleb Johnson as protection behind Jacobs, and within days the league placed Jacobs himself on the Commissioner's Exempt List following two misdemeanor charges connected to a strangulation arrest. The insurance was for the roster spot. Nobody graded it for the reason the spot needed insuring.” — Trudy
…(cont) This reporter continues: indeed, the trade grades published across the football press treated the Johnson acquisition as a shrewd depth move, the sort of transaction analysts rate on a letter scale, A-minus, solid value, low draft cost - grades assigned, this reporter must note, before the exempt-list placement was public, which speaks to the timing of American professional football journalism in the year 1962, when wire reports moved by teletype and a roster move could sit unremarked for a full week.
“It was days, Gus, not a week, and teletype had nothing to do with it - these grades ran this month, on CBS Sports and elsewhere, dated within forty-eight hours of both stories. The point isn't the speed of the wire. It's that the same outlets ran the depth-chart grade and the exempt-list placement back to back, and the word insurance sat in both headlines like nobody noticed it meant two different things.” — Trudy
This reporter, chastened but undeterred, offers the following: a roster is a ledger of bodies, and a league that grades the acquisition without grading the vacancy has graded only half the page. The Commissioner's Exempt List exists for a reason, and this week the reason and the replacement arrived in the same news cycle, under the same word.
“They call it a trade grade like it's a stock pick, then two headlines later the guy's on the exempt list for a strangulation charge. The insurance policy they were bragging about is the same guy the league won't let near the building.”
The receipts
Johnson was selected by Pittsburgh in the third round of the 2025 NFL Draft out of Iowa
Green Bay's backfield is facing uncertainty entering Week 1, with Jacobs prohibited from practicing or attending games
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.