With David Bakhtiari on PUP, Elgton Jenkins' time at tackle underscores costly mistake late last season

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“Yeah, anytime it doesn’t work out, you always regret it right?”

That was Matt LaFleur on his decision to kick a field goal down eight against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, late in the fourth quarter of the NFC Championship Game. Win probability models disagree on how big a mistake that was in terms of risk management, but it wasn’t the biggest misstep the Packers made in the conference title game. In fact, that blunder came before the contest even kicked off and they’re proving in heading into 2021.

When David Bakhtiari went down late last season, the Packers slid right tackle Billy Turner to left tackle and moved veteran Rick Wagner into the starting lineup. It went fine against the depleted L.A. Rams with Aaron Donald less than 100% and some mediocre edge rushers across the line of scrimmage. But that’s the point. Donald, even a reduced version, would blow up most game plans. Elgton Jenkins made sure he didn’t, owning that matchup and helping the Packers control the point of attack.

But against the Buccaneers, the edge rushers and fearsome blitzing linebackers beguiled the Packers, overwhelming an overmatched offensive line. They didn’t put their best five guys on the field and that’s the problem.

How do we know that? I’m just some guy with a blog and a podcast. Well, they’re telling us. With Bakhtiari now slated to miss at least six weeks as he begins the season on the PUP list, the Packers started from the jump with Jenkins as the fill-in tackle. When they made that plan this spring, they didn’t have Dennis Kelley yet, a reasonable stand-in for Wagner in this scenario, but they did have Turner, the man who played left tackle last year.

They went in a different direction

Albert Breer suggested on Twitter the Packers believe Jenkins is the best offensive lineman in football. So how much changed over the last six months in that regard to sway them from starting him at the most important line position in the team’s most important game of the season? Green Bay’s inability to block the Buccaneers front may have been moot—they couldn’t block Tampa even fully healthy in the regular season and that was with Vita Vea injured.

LaFleur said after the Bucs loss they leaned too heavily on dropback passing in the red zone where Green Bay went 2-4 while Tampa Bay went 2-2. If Davante Adams catches the touchdown he had in his hands or Rodgers takes off on the third down which set up the fourth-and-goal decision, who knows how that game plays out?

Still, they didn’t have themselves the best chance to win from the outset.

Rather than playing Turner out of position as well as starting a backup player, essentially giving them two backups, they could have kicked Jenkins out to left tackle, kept Turner at his more familiar right tackle spot, and played Jon Runyan Jr. at Jenkins’ left guard spot where he’d been solid enough for Aaron Rodgers to nickname him “Mr. Reliable.”

That was their best five and they didn’t put them on the field against the most dynamic front in football.

Righting this wrong in the regular season won’t undo the mistake of last season, one that may not have mattered because the Packers defense still may not have stopped the Bucs when they needed to; Kevin King couldn’t be un-started too.

Tampa Bay presented a unique challenge with their ability to send blitzing linebackers with receiver speed from all angles. They boast a slew of interior pass rushers and edge players who can win just about any 1-on-1 matchup.

“They do a nice job of disguising and holding up stuff until the snap. It’s a good scheme,” LaFleur said after the loss.

“We didn’t do enough offensively to counteract that and we gotta take a good, long hard look at what we’re doing offensively for that because that is a team that I’m sure that down the road if we’re in a situation like this again that we’ll have potentially to play. And I’m sure other people will take a look at that tape as well.”

The arrival of Kelley, a better player last year for the Titans than Wagner had been for the Lions, as well as the surprise upside of rookie Royce Newman, puts the Packers in a better position to weather this storm than they were in last year even if JRJ hasn’t made the strides the Packers were hoping he would. None of those insurance policies can guarantee Green Bay avoids a similar fate in the playoffs or that this group, even healthy, will be good enough against the Buccaneers in a rematch.

But planning on starting Jenkins at left tackle from Day 1 of the 2021 offseason serves as a tacit admission of wrongdoing in how the team handled Bakhtiari’s injury last season. LaFleur’s laudable approach to letting everyone compete and playing the best five didn’t show up in the team’s most crucial moment. It may not be the reason they lost but it certainly has to be mentioned as a reason. Learning from that reflects growth on the part of one of the best head coaches in the league

Now LaFleur sees how razor thin the margin between a disappointing gut-punch of an end is compared to a Super Bowl victory. Experiential learning can hurt, but he’s showing he’s taking his education in stride.