It’s difficult to find the right word to describe the Josh Jacobs situation, given the fraught nexus of legal technicality, business reality, and human empathy. Brian Gutekunst and the rest of the front office must remain patient amid the uncertainties of the ongoing investigation, but conversely, they cannot wait to begin forming some kind of a plan. Strictly from a football perspective, the first order of business would seem clear: If the ability of your starting running back becomes unclear, you turn to your next best option, the guy you drafted in the third round two years ago.
The trouble is, beyond the uncertainty of Jacobs’ status lies only more uncertainty, because MarShawn Lloyd is The Backrooms.
For the uninitiated, The Backrooms is a horror concept first explored in a series of YouTube short films and now the subject of the blockbuster feature film sensation from wunderkind director Kane Parsons (no relation). The Backrooms is a kind of supernatural space based on those weird, empty corridors in the deep interior of shopping malls and other retail outlets. If you ever worked at a Hot Topic or a food court Orange Julius, you’ve been in that eerie, windowless employees-only area meant for loading and storage. In The Backrooms, Kane Parsons imagines this capitalist netherspace as a kind of alternate dimension. There is no end, only one door leading to another in an infinite regression of almost-but-not-quite-the-same corridors.
The Backrooms evoke a profound sense of existential dread in their claustrophobic inescapability. They’re frustratingly familiar yet slightly, disturbingly different in their seemingly endless variations.
Sound familiar? It might if you’ve been following Lloyd’s professional career.
Lloyd’s injury history has indeed been like something out of a horror movie. To enumerate the various, often unrelated litany of health woes that have sidelined him for 99% of his professional career is an exercise in tragic slapstick.
Zone Coverage’s Felipe Reis put this extensive list of calamities as succinctly as possible:
His rookie season in 2024 was especially frustrating. MarShawn Lloyd battled multiple soft-tissue injuries throughout the year, including repeated hamstring issues that lingered for months. He also dealt with a hip injury during training camp. That ankle sprain sidelined him for several games, and he later missed even more time because of appendicitis combined with another hamstring setback. Every time it looked like he could build momentum, another injury seemed to get in the way.
Unfortunately for Lloyd, 2025 did not bring much better luck. He again missed time in training camp because of a groin injury before suffering yet another hamstring strain that kept him out for most of the season. A calf strain later added to the growing list of injuries, and another hamstring issue eventually ended his year altogether.
As a result, Lloyd has taken the field during only one NFL regular-season game, on September 15, 2024, when he played a grand total of 10 snaps against the Indianapolis Colts, tallying 15 rushing yards on six carries and adding three more yards on a single pass.
Oh, and Lloyd had to sit out team drills in OTAs on Thursday of last week.
What makes the depth of this frustration feel bottomless is that, at no point, has Lloyd been definitively sidelined for a long stretch, the way a player would be if they tore an ACL or ruptured their Achilles tendon. He always seems to be on the verge of recovery, a tantalizing mystery box the Packers will finally get to open…until there’s yet another reason that they cannot.
Make no mistake, however frustrated you are with Lloyd’s bafflingly ubiquitous health woes, you are not at the Most Frustrated list. The No. 1 spot undoubtedly belongs to MarShawn Lloyd himself, who keeps doing rehab work only to suffer yet another setback. Immediately behind him on said list are probably the members of Green Bay’s medical and training staff who have been tasked with getting Lloyd back on the field. Probably not trailing far behind are Gutekunst and Matt LaFleur. So, you can be mad, but you’re going to have to wait your turn — and there’s no reason to be mad at Lloyd himself.
And yet, the situation is dire. The gravity of the accusations against Jacobs, along with the unknowable timeline for his day in court and any subsequent discipline, opens the door to a vast array of possibilities. And behind that door is yet another labyrinth of dead ends and winding, empty corridors leading to nowhere. Behind that door is MarShawn Lloyd, the NFL’s living equivalent of The Backrooms.
Green Bay’s ground attack ranked 16th in average rushing yards last season, so it was already a questionable decision to simply run it back with the same group in 2026, give or take an Emanuel Wilson or Pierre Strong, Jr. Lloyd was already the X-factor of all X-factors as the RB2. Now, with Jacobs’ availability also in doubt, that uncertainty isn’t just multiplied; it’s exponential. The Packers are lost in a vast, liminal space, where one empty room leads only to another, with no exit in sight.
