Here’s what center Elgton Jenkins said after his first practice as a participant with the Green Bay Packers this year.
Like Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst said in his opening training camp practice, center Elgton Jenkins did return to the field today once he was activated off the non-football injury list. Jenkins only went through walkthroughs with the team, as he’s still working through a back issue, but this is the first time he’s participated in a Packers practice this year.
Jenkins missed voluntary workouts with the team this spring and summer and was a hold-in for the team’s mandatory minicamp, meaning that he stood next to his teammates but never jumped into participation. Today, he was the team’s number one center in walkthroughs, but he was replaced by Sean Rhyan when player-versus-player work began.
After practice, Jenkins spoke to the press in the Packers’ new locker room. The narrative he put forward doesn’t pass the sniff test, but at least he’s back in Green Bay getting ready for the season.
According to The Athletic’s Matt Schneidman, Jenkins both told the team that he wanted to move to center last year and then was hesitant to move to the position following the Packers’ stated intent to play him there this year following last season’s exit interview. Obviously, he could have changed his mind between the start and end of last year, but he didn’t seem to explain why that might have happened.
Jenkins also told the media that he missed voluntary workouts because of a family situation, not because of his contract. That, again, could be true, but that doesn’t explain why Jenkins was a hold-in for mandatory minicamp. Whether or not he stepped on the practice field with a helmet or not wouldn’t have impacted his family matter in any way that I can imagine.
Per the Green Bay Press-Gazette’s Ryan Wood, Jenkins doesn’t believe there is going to be an adjustment to his contract moving forward. So he’s ready to play on his four-year extension that he signed back in 2022, which he had previously played two years on.
No matter what anyone says into a hot mic, it’s my belief that Jenkins’ hold-in and missed voluntary workouts stem from the fact that he’s due $20 million in non-guaranteed money in 2026. $20 million will tie Lloyd Cushenberry’s Year 1 money for the highest yearly cash payment an NFL center has ever received, according to Over the Cap. The issue is not that Jenkins wanted more money in 2026; it’s that the team can clear $20 million in cap space by moving on from him next year and that there are no guarantees or deadlines tying the team to him moving forward. On top of that, Green Bay is projected to be over the cap in 2026, so they’ll need to find a way to clear cap space — be it by converting salaries into bonuses and pushing cap hits forward or by finding a couple of cap casualties.
Considering the Packers post-June 1st released former All-Pro cornerback Jaire Alexander, it’s hard not to sympathize with a player for wanting to avoid the same fate. By the time Green Bay released Alexander, much of the free agent money available had already been sucked out of the market, leaving Alexander to sign a one-year deal with a $2 million base with the Baltimore Ravens.
How both sides will try to spin this story matters much less, though, than the fact that Jenkins is ready to work for 2025. We’ll just have to worry about 2026 after the playoffs.