Las Vegas Raiders running back Josh Jacobs blasted through the Seattle Seahawks defensive front to open grass and sprinted 86 yards for the game-winning touchdown for a 40-34 overtime victory.
The play almost didn't happen. Jacobs was a game-time decision after sustaining a calf injury in practice on Friday. He tweaked the injury again late in regulation, and coaches considered sitting the running back. But Jacobs wouldn't be denied.
"It's kind of crazy coming in and not knowing if I was going to play," Jacobs said. "Looking the guys in their eyes, telling them that they're going to get everything they got out of me. They didn't want me to finish the game, but I kind of convinced them that I could go.
"Biggest play of the game happened after that."
Playing through the injury, Jacobs generated 303 scrimmage yards, the 10th player since at least 1940 to reach 300-plus yards in a single game, per NFL Research.
Jacobs gashed the Seahawks' defense for 229 yards and 74 receiving yards and added two TDs. He became the only player since at least 1950 with 225-plus rushing yards and 70-plus receiving yards in a contest. It's the most rush yards in a road game by a Raiders player since Bo Jackson rushed for 221 yards at Seattle on 'MNF' 35 years ago this week (Week 12, 1987), when he famously capped a 91-yard TD by running all the way into the tunnel.
In 11 games, Jacobs has already set a career-high with 1,159 rushing yards, leading the NFL (Derrick Henry is second with 1,048).
"I'm running out of superlatives," coach Josh McDaniels said of Jacobs. "Over 300 total yards in a game. Didn't feel perfect but he just -- I think, [he has] toughness. He's a football player. That's probably the greatest compliment I could give him. He comes up big. He had a couple big first downs on third-and-short, I'm not sure everybody in the league gets those, but he did. And then, of course, makes the big play at the end.
"I thought he was tremendous throughout. Gave us a lot of hard yards in the running game, caught the ball well out of the backfield, made some big plays with his hands. That's JJ. That's what he is."
The victory is the Raiders' second straight overtime win, the first team to play and win consecutive road OT games in a single season since the Jets in Weeks 9 and 10, 2010. Sunday's victory marked the first time Vegas has scored 40 points in a game since Week 5, 2020.
Entering the season with question marks after the Raiders elected not to pick up his fifth-year option, Jacobs has proven week after week he's a difference-maker.
"That mentality that [Jacobs] brings and that mindset, the way he runs and the way he, over and over and over again, was finishing, not just downhill but through people, he's always finishing forward," quarterback Derek Carr said. "Him bringing that mindset, man, how hard he's worked, all those things, I said it at the beginning of the year ... the happiest person in the building, besides me, is gonna be Josh Jacobs. And we're seeing the fruits of that now."
