Not all of Raider Nation still has love for Josh Jacobs following the All-Pro’s decision to join the Green Bay Packers last offseason. There’s no love lost between Jacobs and his now-former Las Vegas Raiders teammates, however.
In fact, when asked who the most underrated player he’s played with on stream this week, Jacobs elected to highlight a Raider as opposed to one of his own on the Packers. That’s wideout Jakobi Meyers, who played alongside Jacobs during the ’23 season.
“That’s tough,” the Green Bay running back said in response to the question.
“I would say, who shocked me the most, especially on a day-to-day basis, was Jakobi Meyers. He’s like that.
“You see him at practice, he works, he does the grunt work, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t complain. He does his work. He’s a real one. So I’ll say Jakobi. Jakobi’s really like that.”
Josh Jacobs talks now-former Las Vegas Raiders teammate Jakobi Meyers; “Zero drops”
That’s right; Jakobi Meyers totaled zero drops this past season. Well, that depends on who you ask, anyway.
Drops are the true epitome of subjective ‘stats’; what person A considers a drop may be different than what person B does. And neither person has to be wrong, either. That’s exactly why drops aren’t an official NFL stat.
In any case, if a site that tracks their own stats puts a goose egg in a player’s drop column, you can bet that player had sure-hands throughout the season. Regardless of if some of the non-dropped passes are debatable or not.
That’s why when The 33rd Team noted Jakobi Meyers is the first pass-catcher in their database to accumulate 100-plus targets without having any amount of drops since the year 2000, fans league-wide couldn’t help but notice.
Of course, some other sites would debate this. For example, as per Pro Football Focus, DeAndre Hopkins achieved this feat in 2019 while hauling in 104 balls. PFF, for example, also had credited Larry Fitzgerald with zero drops throughout the ’19 season as well.
As for Meyers, PFF agrees the 28-year-old went the entirety of his 2024 campaign without dropping so much as one pass his way. More impressively, this was done while hauling in 16 passes in tight coverage.
For reference, Fitzgerald caught 13 passes when blanketed in coverage back in 2019 while Hopkins recorded only 12 catches of the same variety during the same season.
As far as hands go, Meyers had a season comparable to, and arguably better than, the most sure-handed pass-catchers in recent years. It’s no wonder that he came to Jacobs’ mind when asked who the most underrated teammate he’s ever had is.
*Top Photo: Getty Images
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