We've been down this road before, but we might finally be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
Brandon Jacobs, the perpetually unhappy Giants running back, gave an interview to Men's Fitness magazine and once again vented his disgust at the way the Giants choose to use him out of the backfield. He had 38 carries this season in four games before missing the last two games with a sprained MCL.
"I just can’t wait to get out there and show myself again, you know?" he said. "Next year, hopefully. This is a business, and you have to look at it that way. I just want to get out there and show myself. It’s going to have to be for another team, but it is what it is. It comes with the territory."
Jacobs' contract runs through the 2012 season, but he restructured his contract this offseason and moved $500,000 of salary to a roster bonus that must be paid in March. That means he gave the team an easy mechanism to dump him and give him ample time to land somewhere else.
That was a smart move, and his departure will likely come to pass because it gets clearer and clearer that Ahmad Bradshaw is the best running back on the Giants right now and there's no reason to believe he won't be the better running back going forward. They would need a complementary player, but why bother dealing with Jacobs' incessant dissatisfaction and high salary when you could get someone who has neither to do the same job?
Perhaps the funniest part of the interview is the way Jacobs' complaints about not getting enough carries to get into a good flow mirrors his description of his video game abilities. There's a sidebar about Jacobs playing Call of Duty in which he says that he doesn't like playing the game with teammates because he "can’t get warmed up if I keep passing the controller back and forth."
There's a reset button on video games that doesn't exist in the NFL, so if he wants to convince the Giants to give him more carries, Jacobs should try to figure out some way to be ready to go when his number's called. Otherwise, all the complaining in the world is only going to guarantee that he's got plenty of time to hone his skills with a joystick in the years to come.
U.S. & World
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
