New Green Bay Packers’ running back Josh Jacobs has spent his first five NFL seasons with the Las Vegas Raiders. But despite being on a new team and having just arrived in Green Bay, there were two familiar faces, Rich Bisaccia and Keisean Nixon, waiting to greet him.
Bisaccia and Jacobs would spend three seasons together in Las Vegas. Bisaccia joined the Raiders in 2018 as the special teams coordinator and assistant head coach before becoming the interim head coach for the latter portion of the 2021 season. Jacobs was then drafted during the 2019 offseason.
During their time together in Las Vegas, Bisaccia and Jacobs developed a close relationship that had a tremendous impact on Jacobs. So much so, in fact, that Bisaccia being in Green Bay was an important factor in Jacobs’ decision to join the team.
“Man, Coach Bisaccia,” said Jacobs with a smile, “I’m not going to lie. He was one of the main reasons I wanted to come here too, just knowing he was already here and dealing with him in the past.
“We’ve always had a tight relationship, and that year he was head coach, we had a lot of real conversations. We sat down, we talked about life and everything. To be around him and that energy he has every day, I think it’s going to be fun.”
Nixon, meanwhile, also spent his first three NFL seasons, from 2019 to 2021, with the Raiders, all of which overlapped with Jacobs’ time there as well, where the two formed a strong bond.
Both Nixon and Jacobs have stayed in touch over the last two years while they’ve been on different teams. If Bisaccia played an important role in Jacobs’ decision to come to Green Bay, then the conversations that Jacobs and Nixon have had since he joined the team have solidified that it was the right decision.
”We’ve talked a lot,” said Jacobs about his relationship with Nixon. “We’ve talked a lot. Like I said, he’s one of them guys that I always keep up with him too. Coming in, Keisean is very charismatic. He’s a charismatic guy.
“But man, we were talking last night about this place, and he told me how much it reminded him about college ball and how much there’s just a real genuine love for football and what you do on a day-to-day basis. And he kind of sold me, I’m like yeah, he got me ready to play. But man, good dude.”
In addition to Bisaccia and Nixon, while Jacobs’ and Xavier McKinney’s decisions to sign with the Packers were independent of each other, each has a familiar face in one another to lean on as they acclimate to their new team and city. Both played at Alabama during the 2017 and 2018 seasons under Nick Saban.
Whether you’re an NFL football player or starting a new job of your own, joining a new team where there is already an existing relationship or two certainly helps with the transition and can make one feel at home a bit sooner.
In addition to joining a new team, which means getting accustomed to a new playbook and new play calls, along with being in a new city, there is the Green Bay climate – the winters – that will be a bit new for Jacobs as well.
Jacobs is from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He played his college ball at Alabama and has spent his first five NFL seasons in Las Vegas. Of course, there have been away games played in the cold, but by and large, his home base has not been where the temperatures can be frigid.
While it will be different, as a running back, Jacobs is looking forward to playing in the cold because it will make him more difficult to tackle–a feat that has already proven to be challenging for opponents. During his All-Pro season in 2022, Jacobs led the NFL in missed tackles forced and ranked 11th in average yards after contact.
“Oh, as a running back,” said Jacobs, “you love playing in the cold because people don’t want to hit you. Then after a while you start to wear on them, and it makes it a lot easier. I think if I was (I think he said “another player”), I might be like, uhhhhh, but as a running back I love it.”
