The Green Bay Packers had a very impactful start to free agency, swapping out longtime running back Aaron Jones and bringing in Josh Jacobs as his replacement. The moves happened so quickly that even coach Matt LaFleur was not quite expecting them.
LaFleur admitted that he was caught off-guard by the Packers’ decision to replace Jones with Jacobs on the first day of free agency, suggesting he was not entirely consulted on the move.
“It kind of caught me off guard, to be honest with you,” LaFleur said last week at the NFL owners meetings, via Jason Wilde of the Wisconsin State Journal. “There were some other things in play, obviously with Aaron Jones, and I didn’t quite know how everything was going to go. It just happened really fast on that Monday.”
Why did things change so quickly? The Packers had hoped to negotiate a pay cut with Jones, but when that did not happen, the team moved quickly and cut him in favor of Jacobs. LaFleur presumably knew that Jones being forced to walk was a possibility, but perhaps an unlikely one.
LaFleur has gotten in trouble for being a bit too flippant with his words before, but in this instance, the whole thing happened so fast that he probably was not entirely clued in. He doesn’t necessarily sound unhappy with the move, though.
