Injury Could Mean End of Era But Create New Opportunity

GREEN BAY, Wis. – “We go as Elgton goes.”

That’s what offensive line coach Luke Butkus said a couple weeks ago about center Elgton Jenkins. If the Green Bay Packers are going to go to the playoffs, it’ll be without Jenkins.

Jenkins sustained a broken fibula during the first half of Monday night’s loss to the Eagles and was placed on injured reserve on Tuesday. With that, he might have played his final snap for the Packers.

The team filled his roster spot by promoting linebacker Kristian Welch from the practice squad.

On the play, quarterback Jordan Love scrambled, was tackled and rolled into the back of Jenkins’ leg. Jenkins managed to walk off the field on his own – a testament to his toughness and grit – before being carted to the locker room with what originally was called an ankle injury.

Sean Rhyan presumably will start at center when the Packers play at the New York Giants on Sunday.

Rhyan was a third-round pick by the Packers in 2022. He’s had quite an interesting career. He played one snap as a rookie and finished the season serving a suspension. In 2023, he moved into a timeshare at right guard with veteran starter Jon Runyan Jr. In 2024, he started every game and played every snap in eight of the final nine games.

In 2025, he started the first four games – playing every snap in Weeks 2, 3 and 4 – before losing the job to last year’s first-round pick, Jordan Morgan. He’s still seen plenty of playing time, though, due to injuries to left guard Aaron Banks. In fact, he’s eighth on the offense with 392 snaps and will move up to sixth by the end of Sunday.

“Sean brings a great energy,” Love said after the game. “Obviously, he’s a guy who’s played a lot of ball. It’s tough losing Elgton and we’ll see what the status is on him, but I think Sean did a great job coming in and he’s a guy who stays ready for whatever opportunity it is whether it’s guard, center, whatever. He did a good job tonight; got to keep building on it.”

Jenkins was one of the stable pieces on an offensive line slowed by injuries and revolving doors. Before the injury, he and Love were the only players to play all 537 offensive snaps.

Green Bay Packers guard Elgton Jenkins (74) center is helped off the field after his injury against the Eagles. | Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

Jenkins was the elder statesman of the unit. He’ll turn 30 one day after Christmas. A second-round pick in 2019, the Philadelphia game was Jenkins’ 101st career start (including playoffs).

“He’s been here the longest. He’s been here the whole time; his seventh year,” Butkus said. “When I talk about standards and not living up to those right now in the offensive line room, that’s Elgton. That’s me. That’s the rookies. We go as he goes. He’s the leader and he’s going to make sure that we do things right.”

Jenkins was a key part of the Packers’ huge offseason makeover of the offensive line. Rather than re-sign Josh Myers in free agency or replace him with a veteran or through the draft, general manager Brian Gutekunst signed Banks to a $77 million contract in free agency and shifted Jenkins, a Pro Bowler at left guard, to center.

It’s a move that Jenkins embraced and had pushed for, but the transition had been slow, perhaps due in part to his decision to skip the offseason workouts in hopes of getting a contract extension.

Jenkins didn’t get the extension, and it’s possible that he’s played his final game for the Packers. ESPN.com’s Rob Demovsky said Jenkins’ return might require a “long playoff run.”

Jenkins is under contract through next season, though his 2026 base salary of $18.5 million probably is untenable given his age, the injury and how he played this season.

Pro Football Focus charged Jenkins with two sacks allowed. His career-worst season for sacks was 2022, when he allowed three in a season that he opened at right tackle. Sports Info Solutions charged him with one sack after giving up zero in 2023 and 2024, with a career-worst blown-block rate of 2.3 percent. The unit at times seemed unorganized, too, in allowing more defenders to run free than usual.

“I wouldn’t put that on Elgton at all,” offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich said last week. “Those are things that we talked about with the protections, those are adjustments that some of them are on the quarterback, some of them are on Elgton, some of them are on the schemes where we’ve just got to do a better job with the plays that we call. It’s definitely not on Elgton, though.”

The Packers have considerable salary-cap challenges beginning next season. Releasing Jenkins would provide $20.0 million in savings, a fact that he no doubt was aware of when he tried to get a contract extension.

Rhyan was a left tackle at UCLA. Other than four snaps at center at the end of a blowout win over San Francisco in Week 12 of last season, he hadn’t played the position in a game until Monday.

Jacob Monk, a fifth-round pick in 2024 who hasn’t played in a game this season and has played zero snaps from scrimmage in his career, presumably will be the next man up. Of his 3,555 snaps at Duke, he played a total of 473 at center in 2022 and 2023. The other option would be Donovan Jennings, an undrafted free agent in 2024 who has played seven snaps on special teams this year.

“At the end of the day, we got to execute and not try to do too much but do our one-eleventh,” Rhyan said after the game. “Block our guys, make our calls and just go execute because, shoot, we got weapons all around us that can help us out and make us right. We just have to do our thing and just focus on us, and then we’ll be all right. I think that’ll get us popping.”

What Rhyan lacks in experience at the position, he perhaps will make up for in power.

“We’re not running the ball to our standard,” he said. “Not trying sugarcoat anything, we got to get f***ing better at running that rock. Like I said, we got to do our job and, if we do our job, it will allow everyone else to do their job well. So, it starts with us.”

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