Josh Jacobs 2026 Season Preview — the triple flag | Muffed

Josh Jacobs scored thirteen rushing touchdowns last year and finished a top-ten back per game. He also ran for four yards a carry, finished below average in yards over expected, and turns twenty-eight this season. That's three flags on one back, and the price is paying for none of them. The Muffed 2026 preview.

The season: fifteen-eight a game, RB10 per game, on a heavy Green Bay workload — but the value was almost pure touchdown equity. Thirteen rushing scores, tied fourth in the league. Underneath them: four yards a carry and minus seven rushing yards over expected, thirty-seventh among qualified backs. The signature was a forty-yard touchdown at Denver — and it was, by the data, the only truly explosive run on his entire leaderboard all year. Boom-or-bust by design: four big games, four near-zeroes.

The arc: thirteen-nine, seventeen-two, fifteen-eight. The good years are touchdown-inflated, and the most recent one came with declining efficiency — his yards per carry fell from four-four to four-flat.

Now the three flags, because this is the cleanest fade in the batch. One: his touchdown share is thirty-five-point-four percent, the highest of any back we cover, deep in the quartile our rule fades by three points a game. Two: he's a career-year-seven back at age twenty-eight, where the RB aging curve docks another point-plus. Three: his rushing efficiency was below average — minus seven over expected — so he isn't creating the yardage, he's converting goal-line volume into scores that won't repeat at that rate.

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The situation doesn't help, per the reports: Jacobs projects to dominate Green Bay's backfield touches again, which keeps the volume — but the offense lost about a hundred vacated touches it hasn't replenished, his cap number is a future concern, and he dealt with calf, knee, and ankle issues in 2025. Volume on poor efficiency at age twenty-eight is the exact profile that falls off without warning.

The price: pick thirty-eight, the eighteenth back. Verdict: CALL — overpriced. Touchdown-share fade, aging fade, and below-average efficiency, all on the same player, at a price that assumes the thirteen touchdowns repeat. The counter: the workload is secure and goal-line backs score touchdowns — but thirteen on this efficiency, at this age, is the bet we won't make. Let someone else.

September watch: the goal-line touchdown rate, where thirteen scores has the most to lose; and the yards per carry, which needs to climb off four-flat to argue the efficiency isn't gone. Your guys, every week. Next preview's queued.