When Josh Jacobs attended Alabama during head coach Nick Saban’s heyday from 2016 to 2018, he was part of a winning program. He lost just one game in each of his three seasons there, finishing 39-3 overall, including winning the 2017 National Championship. However, he was drafted by the Oakland Raiders 24th overall in 2019. The Raiders had not been a winning program for some time.
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He arrived during a turbulent period in Oakland, with the Antonio Brown and Jon Gruden controversies, as well as a move to Las Vegas on the horizon. During his five-year tenure with the team, Jacobs had to deal with four seasons of .500 or worse, along with one short-lived playoff appearance following a 10-7 season in 2021.
Jacobs believes the losing culture wasn’t just tied to those controversies and the move, but also to the losing standard that had crept into the facility over the past couple of decades. He had gotten used to winning at Alabama, and he wasn’t about to start getting used to losing in Sin City.
“That locker room then was definitely different. I remember my first ‘Oh’ moment was, I remember we lost a game, and I was in the locker room, mad. At ‘Bama, I probably lost three, maybe four games, in the three years I was there. So I’m used to winning,” recalled the RB.
“So I’m in the locker room mad and I remember the vets came up to me laughing and sh*t. And I’m like, ‘the f*ck ya’ll laughing for?'”
Jacobs’ veterans during his 2019 rookie year tried to teach him a lesson. It was one the Alabama alumnus had no interest in learning. They tried to tell him to get used to losing. Jacobs, however, refused to accept that, stating that mentality was not conducive to winning.
“They were like, ‘Man, you’re gonna learn, in this league, you’re gonna lose. You gotta get used to it,’ and all this other kind of stuff. But I was like, that mentality, I remember I was like, we’re not going to ever win like that,” Jacobs continued.
“If people don’t take this a little more personal. It’s one thing to obviously be crying after the game, but don’t be sitting around like you’re happy that we lost.”
Eventually, Jacobs’ disappointment with the direction of the franchise came to a head. He was allowed to leave in free agency in 2024, and he promptly helped lead the Green Bay Packers to an 11-6 season and a playoff berth. The Raiders, meanwhile, tried to tank but kind of mucked it up. They finished 4-13 but only got the sixth overall pick.
However, they used that pick on All-World running back Ashton Jeanty. They also brought Tom Brady on board as a minority owner, Pete Carroll in as head coach, Geno Smith in at quarterback, and John Spytek in as general manager. Clearly, the Raiders finally recognized as an organization what Jacobs had noticed in his first year with the team: there was a culture problem.
Carroll, Brady, and company are sure to fix that in 2025 and beyond.
