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The veteran interior lineman is back in practice and it appears nothing has changed with his contract
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 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...
