Published October 16, 2026 04:00 PM
The efforts of Packers running back Josh Jacobs to keep the NFL from seeing the video of the altercation that resulted in his no-contest plea for battery has worked. For now.
The NFL has announced that Jacobs will be reinstated from the Commissioner Exempt list on Monday.
The timing isn’t coincidental. With the baseline punishment for domestic battery under the Personal Conduct Policy set at six games, the move allows the league to pre-suspend a player whose internal investigation is still pending. Then, if/when a suspension is imposed, he’ll get credit for the games missed while on paid leave — and he’ll forfeit the pay he received during the games in which he didn’t play.
Although paid leave technically isn’t discipline (even though, as a practical matter, it is), the missed games become part of the eventual discipline. And the league’s decision to reserve the right to add additional games ties directly to the video that it wants to review before it closes his case.
It’s a risky move for the NFL. Until it sees the video, it won’t know whether the video contains images that would justify a much more significant punishment than a six-game suspension. The better play, given Jacobs’s efforts to keep the league from seeing the video, would be to tell him that he won’t play at all until the league sees the video.
If, in the end, the video is as shocking as the Ray Rice video from 2014 was, the NFL will have another P.R. mess on its hands. Maybe, after 12 years, the memory of extent of the Ray Rice situation has faded. Either way, the safest approach would have been to tell Jacobs that, until the video is seen by the league, his stay on paid leave will continue.