Green Bay Packers now have to overcome Elgton Jenkins Injury

Just make it stop. The injuries keep coming for this Green Bay Packers team, with the latest being a season-ending ACL tear for the do-it-all offensive lineman Elgton Jenkins.

In David Bakhtiari’s absence, Jenkins had been filling in at left tackle this season and doing so quite well. According to PFF ($$), Jenkins had allowed just two sacks and 12 pressures over his 306 pass-blocking snaps. He is also ESPN’s eighth-best tackle against the run and PFF’s seventh-best tackle overall.

All of which is certainly very impressive. But as well as Jenkins has performed at left tackle, he is at his best at left guard, where he was a Pro Bowler.

Not only would the return of David Bakhtiari provide the Green Bay Packers with an upgrade at one of the most important positions in football — this isn’t a knock on Jenkins, Bakhtiari is just that good — but the interior would receive a massive boost as well with Jenkins moving back inside.

However, with Jenkins now sidelined for the remainder of the season, Royce Newman and Jon Runyan will continue to be the starting guards while Lucas Patrick remains at center until Josh Myers is available—whenever that may be.

As is most often the case, there are a number of reasons behind why the Green Bay Packers aren’t clicking on offense as they were a season ago. But one of those reasons is due to the up and down play of the offensive line, that has dealt with several injuries this season.

While overall this unit has held their own, they are not the dominant force that they were a season ago—there have been more blown assignments, and the run game has been fine but not dominant and hasn’t shown the same big-play ability.

So what’s next for the Green Bay Packers offensive line?

In the meantime, the offensive line will be made up of Yosh Nijman, Runyan, Patrick, Newman, and Billy Turner. Individually each player can be plugged in along a healthy Packers offensive line and perform well as we’ve seen—offensive line play is very much the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

But this is not a healthy Green Bay Packers offensive line with Jenkins done for the season along with Bakhtiari and Myers still sidelined. Plugging in either Nijman, Runyan, Patrick, or Newman when you have the likes of Bakhtiari or Jenkins to lean on is a lot different than those four making up your starting offensive line.

At their best, I do believe this can still be a good offensive line unit, but it’s very unlikely that we see the same dominance that we saw in 2020, even with Bakhtiari back in the mix at some point.

The quick passing game and a good run/pass mix are two ways that Matt LaFleur and Aaron Rodgers can provide this unit with some help, but ultimately, this group is going to have to find ways to pick up blitzes, create running lanes, and give Rodgers time on longer developing plays.

On one other occasion this season, we saw the offensive line combo of Nijman-Runyan-Patrick-Newman-Turner take the field against Cincinnati. They would allow two sacks and nine pressures while Aaron Jones ran for 103 yards on 14 carries and AJ Dillon for 30 yards on eight attempts.

The Green Bay Packers have been able to overcome a number of injuries this season but the loss of Jenkins for the year is going to be one of the most difficult. While football has changed over the years, games are still won and lost in the trenches and the Packers are becoming quite depleted in those trenches.