After his surprise release from the Jacksonville Jaguars last month, Long Beach sports fans have been eager to find out where Long Beach Poly alum Marcedes Lewis would land. As it turns out, he’ll play the 2018 season in a familiar green and gold color scheme, as he announced last week he’s signing with the Packers.
Lewis posted an Instagram photo of him signing the contract with the caption, “Say Cheese!”
Lewis has spent his entire 12-year NFL career with the Jaguars, and will go from one of the league’s newest francises to one of its oldest.
There’s a long history between Poly and the Packers: the Jackrabbits’ first NFL product, Roy Baker, played for them in 1928 and 1929 after two years of playing with the NFL’s Yankees franchise. Three of Poly’s first four NFL products were members of the 1929 NFL championship Packers team, the first-ever Packers team to win a championship. Baker, Jack Evans, and Don Hill were all members of the team, especially impressive considering that there were only 28 players on the roster.
The Packers were 12-0-1 that season, and a crowd of 20,000 welcomed them back to Green Bay after their championship-clinching 25-0 win over the Bears in December of ’29.
This year’s Packers could be poised to similarly make history—Lewis will play for the best quarterback of his career by far in Aaron Rodgers, and joins a talented tight end group that includes Pro Bowler Jimmy Graham.
Lewis’ 10th annual free football camp will be held at Poly in mid-June, visit marcedeslewisfoundation.org.
