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The Elgton Jenkins saga appears to have ended before it even really started

WHAT'S THE STORY?

Syndication: The Post-Crescent
Tork Mason / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The Elgton Jenkins possible-maybe-sort of saga appears to be over, exactly zero padded practice days into training camp.

Now, technically speaking, there was never any saga at all. Jenkins never held out in training camp, but instead was on the NFI list. Players are placed on the NFI when they sustain an injury away from the team facility. Per the team, Jenkins was out with

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a back issue, but was removed from the NFI this morning and started practicing as soon as the pads came on.

While the official story is back issue, I’m going to go off-script for a moment. Back issue is the most common go-to when it’s not actually an injury but is about something else (in the NFL, contract, in other sports like European soccer, about trying to force a transfer, so also about contracts in a way). I am not reporting nor confirming that Elgton did not have a back issue. NFL players, particularly NFL veterans, are basically walking injuries even when healthy. The thing about back issues, though, is that often times, imaging doesn’t show or confirm an issue. Backs are stupid. They’re hyper-sensitive and can go rogue and lock up despite not having any structural damage to muscles, discs, ligaments, etc. Trust me, I am unfortunately keenly aware of this. And it is worth noting that the now-infamous JC Tretter, former president of the NFLPA, was telling players to fake injuries to execute “hold-ins.”

The reason for this is that veteran players cannot hold out in the traditional sense anymore. The fines they accrue for missing mandatory practices are non-refundable. There’s a reason we’ve only seen a couple of legitimate holdouts since the 2011 CBA was ratified, and neither has gone particularly well for the players (see: Reddick, Haason). However, if you’re injured, you’re not holding out, even if you’re just “injured,” and so no fines can be accrued.

Now, the whole reason this is happening, as has been covered at this site before, is that Jenkins is looking at a similar situation next off-season to what Jaire Alexander faced this off-season. He has no guaranteed money left on his deal; he has a sizable cap hit to the team if he is retained (24.8M on the cap) and is due a significant chunk of cash (20M when combining base salary, workout bonus, and per-game roster bonus maximum). The reason Jenkins may get strung out in the wind is that there is no deadline for when Green Bay would need to make a decision. The Packers are over the cap for 2026 as of now, but they don’t need to touch Jenkins' contract at all to get back under. The Packers could hold onto Jenkins into the spring and string him out in the same way they did to Alexander, hoping to utilize the leverage of other teams running out of cash for 2026 into getting a smaller extension. While the situations between Jenkins and Alexander are quite different, with Jenkins playing 17, 15, and 15 regular-season games over the past three years, the situations could follow a similar path, and look at how little Alexander ended up signing for after being released in June.

Aside from the leverage of a possible Green Bay extension, Jenkins is also 29 and will be 30 by the end of the season, and getting guaranteed money of any kind sooner rather than later is something his side will want before he has to run the risk of injury or age-related decline in 2025.

Despite all these reasons for Jenkins to want a rewrite to his contract, or an extension, Green Bay has no real reason to give it to him, and Jenkins has little to no leverage. Sure, Jenkins could hold-in (he wouldn’t hold out in the true sense, too much money to be lost), but Green Bay can put out a perfectly good offensive line without him by kicking Sean Rhyan into center and playing 2024 first-round pick Jordan Morgan at right guard. Jenkins + Rhyan/Morgan is assuredly better than that combo, but the Packers would not be in dire straits without him. And the Packers are not going to have an appetite for setting the precedent of reworking second contracts with two full years left on them, particularly for a non-star, and especially for a non-quarterback.

The Packers sign starting-level players to four year contracts/extensions like clockwork. The trade-off the team makes in doing this is offering sizable cash up front (see Zach Tom’s record setting signing bonus) in exchange for having contract control on the backend with no guaranteed money typically after the first full season of any extension or new contract. The only players that got guaranteed money beyond that? The two big quarterbacks: Aaron Rodgers and Jordan Love. Quarterbacks and non-quarterbacks exist in a different world in the NFL, and the Packers were always quite unlikely to set a new precedent for a player who they already seem to be prepared for his departure.

I do not blame Jenkins and his representation for trying to (possibly) try and put a little pressure on to get something done, but unfortunately for him, he’s just not in a position to force the organization to budge at all. I always found even some sort of “saving face” alteration to be unlikely because of the precedent of touching a contract that it sets. At some point in the future, a situation will arise where Green Bay does touch that stove, but Elgton Jenkins wasn’t going to be the player to make that happen. Thus, I am not surprised that the end of this maybe-a-saga-maybe-not-a-saga is Elgton Jenkins showing up for practice missing zero padded practices and with no contract alteration. It was always the equilibrium.

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