After Playing Like Poop, Elgton Jenkins Eager to Wipe Slate Clean

GREEN BAY, Wis. – After Elgton Jenkins’ blunt self-assessment, he’ll be hoping to, ahem, wipe the slate clean when the Green Bay Packers face the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday.

“I feel like I’ve played like sh**, honestly,” Jenkins, a three-time Pro Bowler who’s in his first season as the team’s center, said this week. “I can play a lot better. A lot of things, a lot of small detail things that I can fix overall. But I just feel like I’ve played like sh** and definitely got to play better moving forward.”

Jenkins moved to center as part of the line makeover following last year’s playoff loss to the Eagles. After solid performances against the Lions and Commanders to start the season, Jenkins joined the rest of the offensive line in getting roughed up by the Browns on Sunday.

Leaders point the finger inward rather than outward, so Packers coach Matt LaFleur appreciated Jenkins’ mentality.

“I personally think that’s a mature response,” he said before Thursday’s practice. “I think we all need to be self-critical if we want to get better. He has a high standard for himself, which is exactly what you want. He’s one of our better players, so in order to win games in this league, you need your best players to play at their best. It wasn’t just him. It was all of us, myself included, so we’ve all got to be better.”

Before being a second-round pick by the Packers in 2019, Jenkins played center at Mississippi State. In Green Bay, he played almost 300 snaps at center in 2020 and started one game last season.

So, it’s not exactly a foreign position but he’s also not experienced, either. Pro Football Focus charged him with two sacks during Sunday’s upset loss at the Cleveland Browns.

“I don’t feel like I played at the level I can play at, let me say that,” he said. “It’s more so the small things that are learning mistakes or mistakes that I wish I would have learned from in camp.

“I’d rather have it happen now. Especially the game that we had as a unit, I’d rather for it to happen now and we can look ourselves in the mirror and be like, ‘This is not the standard, this is not how we play football,’ and make sure that don’t happen no more throughout the year. But, it’s the truth, and it happened, and all we can do is learn from it and get better moving forward.”

Generally, offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich agreed with Jenkins’ assessment. However, they’ve been together since the day Jenkins was drafted, with Stenavich serving as offensive line coach from 2019 through 2021 and offensive coordinator since 2022. He’s seen Jenkins play far too many good snaps, whether it was at left guard or when he moved out to left tackle to replace David Bakhtiari.

“I think he’s being critical of himself,” Stenavich said after Thursday’s practice. “He’s taking ownership and all that stuff. I would say he had a bad game. He didn’t play great for his standards against the Browns. But it’s Game 3 of a 17-game season plus, hopefully, we earn the right to make the playoffs.

“It is what it is. If he can take that negative and make it a positive for the rest of the season, then let’s go and do that. I’m not going to get too high or too low on any of this stuff. I just want to see how they go out there on Sunday and play.”

Jenkins will have a big challenge – and a familiar challenge – against the Cowboys on Sunday night. Lining up across from him will be longtime Packers standout Kenny Clark, who was sent to Dallas part of the Micah Parsons trade. They battled countless times on the practice field, so they know each other’s strengths, weaknesses and tendencies.

“Honestly, this whole camp, we had so many conversations on the things that I see that he could get better at and things that I could get better at that he told me,” Jenkins said. “It’s going to be interesting, honestly.”

Clark is by far the best player on Dallas’ defensive line. The Cowboys enter Sunday’s game with only three sacks. Clark – now wearing No. 95 – has one of them.

“E for sure the best lineman,” Clark said during a conference call with Packers reporters on Thursday. “Me and him been just battling for years. E been great since his rookie year. To really go against him and be live, we had a lot of competition stuff early during camp. The coaches love to see us matched up against each other, and we really battled this year during camp.

“It was definitely a good battle and I’m just excited to play against him. Like he said, we both know each other. We both know what everybody likes to do and I know how he plays and what he like to do so, yeah, it’s going to be interesting just playing against him and that chess matchup. But, at the end of the day, it’s football. You got to play fast, you got to be violent, you got to play with your hands and just play relentless. Definitely, it’s going to be some stuff that he know that I like to do and it’s going to be interesting to see how he’s going to try to combat it.”

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