LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Teven Jenkins was on his Xbox playing NBA 2K with friends when Bears offensive line coach Chris Morgan called him. It was 8 p.m. during training camp.
“Well, tomorrow, we’re going to take a look at you at guard,” Jenkins remembered Morgan saying. “So be ready to brush up on your stuff at guard.”
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Game over.
“Automatically,” Jenkins said, nodding.
He turned off his Xbox and picked up his iPad. He logged into his playbook. His conversation with Morgan lasted only a couple of minutes — “He asked me how I was doing,” Jenkins said — but it was a potentially career-changing phone call for him.
Jenkins played guard previously at Oklahoma State but not as much as right or left tackle. Former general manager Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy had traded up and drafted him in the second round of the 2021 draft to be the franchise’s cornerstone on the left side.
“He took it well and we went with it,” Morgan said. “The rest is history.”
It was a new challenge for Jenkins on what essentially was a new team for him with Morgan, offensive coordinator Luke Getsy, coach Matt Eberflus and general manager Ryan Poles. Jenkins prepared himself for what was to come physically but also personally.
“I’m thinking about practice the next day (and) that I got to get ready for these bigger bodies in the interior and get my mind right for that and quicker action, basically,” Jenkins told The Athletic during a wide-ranging interview at Halas Hall. “I would not say it was probably my last stand here. But I would say, it was probably my best chance of being on the field. So that sparked something inside.”
On first-and-10 from the 49ers’ 33 late in the second quarter in Week 1, Jenkins came off his block with center Sam Mustipher on defensive tackle Arik Armstead. He turned toward Nick Bosa, one of the best pass rushers in the NFL. Bosa was engaged with right tackle Larry Borom.
Jenkins saw his opportunity and violently seized it. He struck Bosa and knocked him on his back. Borom then landed on top of the 49ers’ star rusher. The extra contact allowed quarterback Justin Fields to escape around Bosa’s edge and scramble for a 3-yard gain.
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“It makes it fun,” Borom said. “You see that. He hits him. I go on top of him. It makes it fun. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just like a feeling. Like we both know. We look at each other. It’s just a fun feeling.”
It also was an early sign of what was to come this season for Jenkins at right guard.
“A lot of times people don’t see it, but he finishes a lot of his blocks,” running back Khalil Herbert said. “The play will be done, but he’s on the ground with his guy on his back.”
After the Bears’ pregame prayer concludes in the locker room, Jenkins stays down on a knee. He has his own to say. It’s his moment before the team breaks down. And he does it before every game.
“I’m praying to my mom actually to give her a good show,” Jenkins said. “I hope she’s proud of me, and that she’ll always love me no matter what the performance is.”
Jenkins’ mother, Bridget Cushinberry-Razo, died from breast cancer when he was 8 years old. Jenkins was 3 when she was first diagnosed. He remembers the good times but also the glimpses of her in a bed at his grandmother’s house with IVs in her arms.
In elementary school in Kansas, Jenkins and his older brother, Jaylen, walked a mile and a half from school to his grandmother’s house to be with his mother.
“We would come in, drop our bags off at the door, say hi to Mom, do our homework and go to bed,” Jenkins said. “Like you really couldn’t even see her because she was in a lot of pain and had to be in her own room. She was in a very weakened state.”
Jenkins plays for her. On his right arm, there is a tattoo dedicated to her. On his left, there is another for his cousins who have died Jenkins has been told that his mother had “the most outgoing personality.” His older brother inherited that trait. Jenkins is more soft-spoken like his father, Brad.
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“She’d be very happy that I’d be here,” Jenkins said. “You’d probably hear her from the stands.”
Jenkins thinks of his mother when he plays. And he thinks of his father, who raised him and his brother, often needing the help of relatives on both sides and various coaches to get them to and from school and their sports. Brad is a longtime employee of Grainger.
“He’s always been a great supporter of me and my brother,” Jenkins said. “And (it’s) seeing now like on his income how much he had to sacrifice and how much he had to do to make ends meet for all three of us — food, health, anything.”
It includes miles spent on the road together. Jenkins remembers the road trips when they’d borrow his grandmother’s Toyota Camry and drive to Kansas City or Joplin, Mo., to play football. Jenkins gets his size from his father, a former basketball player whom Jenkins says is 6-6.
“It was a tight squeeze,” Jenkins said.
Jenkins’ roots are humble but loving and positive. His support system was unwavering, especially from his grandmother and uncles on his mother’s side. They worked nights.
“They helped us out a lot when my dad couldn’t watch us during the day,” Jenkins said.
Jenkins’ upbringing was spent either playing sports or inside playing video games. His father had him switch high schools to join a better football team.
He remembers moving around, to different houses and apartments, as a child, the football games and practices he played on dirt and rocks and the time one of his middle school coaches, a computer teacher, told him he wouldn’t make it in college because of his lack of conditioning.
By Jenkins’ senior season at Topeka High School, he was a Division I recruit, who, by his count, averaged 18 pancakes per game. And every pancake means more now because he knows what he wants to deliver for his fiancee, Sydney, whom he met at college at Oklahoma State. She played softball for the Cowgirls. They’ll be married in March.
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“I see myself now as a man who wants to … give my family a stable house, a stable life and not having my kids worry about where they’re going to sleep sometimes,” Jenkins said. “Don’t get me wrong. I had a good, fun childhood. They made it the best they could for me. But I think that’s every parent’s goal is to have it better than what you had as a kid. That’s what I want to do and that’s what I keep on striving for really.”
On first-and-10 from the Bears’ 31 in the third quarter against the Packers in Week 2, Jenkins got his hands on defensive lineman Dean Lowry. It turned into his favorite block of the season, though many good ones came after it this season. But in this case, Jenkins drove Lowry from the numbers into the Bears’ sideline and beyond.
“I mean, it wasn’t a pancake, but that’s still one of my favorite things,” Jenkins said. “I’ve kind of had good luck with that in college, too.
A big one came against Texas. It made him a viral sensation and a coveted draft prospect. Jenkins drove defensive end Joseph Ossai, who became a third-round pick of the Bengals in 2021, into the Longhorns’ sideline and then pancaked him in front of his own teammates.
It's been a week. Still watching this @TevenJenkins block on repeat. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/wjOd7r5sNY
— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) May 7, 2021
“That was still my favorite block that I’ve ever had,” Jenkins said.
But he’s adding more. He more than held his own against the Washington Commanders’ talented duo of Jonathan Allen and Daron Payne. On a run by running back David Montgomery up the middle, Jenkins took Payne, the 13th pick in the 2018 draft, for a ride. Payne tried to cross Jenkins with a move. But Jenkins was ready.
“I caught him perfectly,” Jenkins said. “And I ended up driving him from hash to hash.”
When Brandon Thorn, an offensive line analyst for the Bleacher Report and Establish the Run, prepared for the 2021 NFL draft, he spent nearly an hour going over film with Jenkins.
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In Thorn’s “The Inside the Trenches Film Room” episode for Trench Warfare, the two went through various Jenkins plays at Oklahoma State, discussing his handwork, his jump sets, his drive blocks, the alerts he made up front and his approach to various moves by defenders.
“We talked a lot about technique,” Thorn told The Athletic in a phone interview. “We talked a lot about his situation at Oklahoma State, coaches he had. He played for several different offensive line coaches there. So we talked about a lot of that kind of like nuanced tech, technical stuff.”
Together, Thorn and Jenkins laughed at Jenkins’ “step over” of a West Virginia defensive end after he quickly pancaked him off the line.
“Basically, I’m just trying to make myself a bit more of a d—head and let him know when that happens, I beat your a–, just letting him know,” Jenkins told Thorn in the Trench Warfare video.
Thorn replied by describing it as the “Quenton Nelson Special,” referencing the current Colts All-Pro guard who played at Notre Dame.
Then they got into the Texas game, which Jenkins described as his best. It started with Jenkins’ drive block of Ossai out of bounds, the one that was shared often on social media in the build-up to the draft. But Jenkins said his “favorite play of the year” came on a draw.
“Just being able to reset my feet and then attack him as soon as he starts to open up, that was a big deal for me,” Jenkins told Thorn.
Of course, it ended with Ossai on his back, the result of another powerful shove from Jenkins.
Thorn came away impressed. He rated him as the second-best tackle in the draft class. But there also was Jenkins’ sense of humor, intelligence and approach to the game.
“You definitely get the seriousness, you definitely get the kind of love of imposing his will on defenders and using his physicality and aggressiveness and size and power to his advantage,” Thorn said. “He knows what he does well and he leans on that. So I appreciate that about his game and about him.”
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When the news broke that the Bears were going to try Jenkins at guard, Thorn understood it, though he still liked him at tackle.
“I did think that he could make the move to guard because his skill set I thought would translate well there,” Thorn said. “Some guys may not translate inside very well. He’s one of those guys that could have translated inside. So I thought it was probably going to work out well because of kind of his style and his skill set.”
Thorn definitely likes what he sees now. The move is working. Jenkins is doing what he did in college. It’s on his film, which Thorn cuts up and shares on social media.
In Thorn’s opinion, there are other guards who are winning in the NFL in similar ways as Jenkins, mentioning Rodger Saffold, Wyatt Teller, Trey Smith, Elgton Jenkins, Landon Dickerson, Nelson and Michael Onwenu in that order.
“That a good half dozen or more guys that I think stylistically, you can see some similarities here, in kind of how they win,” Thorn said.
Jenkins is also emerging at the right time in the NFL. Thorn mentioned “the physical element of the game” returning for offenses that want to run as defenses get lighter.
“It’s really good timing for him because I think that what he does well and how he wins is going to play really well over the next couple of years as well with the way the league is trending,” Thorn said. “If I’m stacking right guards, I don’t know that I would put them in the top 10 at the position yet, but I think he certainly has the skill set, the talent to get there.”
Over the past year, Jenkins has learned the value of different types of pancakes, too. He wants to bury his opponents and burn them out.
“There’s a difference between a pancake and finishing a person and a pancake and essentially putting your whole weight on a dude,” Jenkins said. “It feels even more to him. … When you get to the fourth quarter, they’re a little bit more worn down because they’ve been taking those body shots all day.”
On third-and-2 from the Cowboys’ 10-yard line, Montgomery was stopped at the line to gain by multiple defenders.
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Jenkins changed that.
He was the first lineman to arrive to move the pile. Montgomery’s run turned into a 4-yard gain and first down in the red zone.
Two plays later, Fields scored.
“Whenever we’re in a pile, (Jenkins is) the one to jump on the pile and push us an extra yard or two,” Herbert said. “It’s amazing.”
He moves them. The running backs can feel it. It’s power turned into momentum.
And Jenkins cleans them up, too.
“I hate being at the bottom of piles,” Herbert said. “So having the line come clean somebody off of you, make sure you’re protected, it just shows how much we care about each other.”
Bears guard Teven Jenkins, left, battles the Chiefs’ George Karlaftis in a preseason game. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)In Week 4 against the Giants, the Bears’ rotation at right guard with Jenkins and Lucas Patrick took a curious turn. Patrick started for the first time. Jenkins, despite showing progress in his new position and growing list of impressively powerful blocks, had to sit and wait his turn.
A day later, coach Matt Eberflus said “it’s about practice.” He pointed to what happened during practice that Wednesday before the Giants game.
“That whole situation was about me being accountable and me actually bringing my best to practices and being my best for my teammates around me,” Jenkins said. “Their standard is that. And they were trying to keep me to that high standard.”
After Week 7, a different story emerged. The Bears had just run all over the Patriots in a 33-14 win. A few days later, offensive coordinator Luke Getsy praised Jenkins’ play style. He loved it. Jenkins not only took in “the way we want to play,” Getsy said, but “he’s made it his own.” It was the Bears’ strongest endorsement yet of Jenkins.
“Some guys, it’s just naturally in them and they want it,” Getsy later said in an interview with The Athletic. “They need it to help them play better, this attitude or this persona about themselves, like, ‘I’m a badass.’ And I think that’s the cool part, Teven’s kind of taken the reins of that.”
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The idea of shifting Jenkins to guard was rooted in need as Getsy explained it. Lucas Patrick broke his thumb in training camp on July 28. Jenkins returned to practice on Aug. 6 after dealing with a back issue. On Aug. 15, Jenkins practiced at right guard for the first time.
“We kind of felt like we had a little hole at right guard,” Getsy said. “And so in the midst of it, we looked at each guy, and we thought that he might have the best opportunity to have success there. So we let him have a go at it. And to his credit, he just took it.”
The Bears track the pancakes made by linemen each game — “The belt’s changed hands quite a few times,” line coach Chris Morgan said — and it’s a title that Jenkins wants to win.
Some players are just better at it than others. They like and look for it. They want to push piles, clean them up and take care of their teammates.
“A lot of guys try to do it, but most guys aren’t as big and as strong as Teven,” Morgan told The Athletic. “Like Teven is a big, strong man. There’s not a lot of guys in this league who are as big and as strong as he is. So when you put it all together with a guy that’s looking to do that and trying to do that, you have a chance to have something special.”
It started with a phone call.
“My confidence has grown a lot because I’m starting to buy into guard more,” Jenkins said. “At first, I wasn’t really buying into it because I want to keep hope alive that I still am a tackle. But as we progress further, one day, I will finally admit that I am a guard if my career goes that good. And if it’s better for me to do my career as a guard, I’d definitely say that I’m a guard. And like I said earlier, it’s all about the motivation inside of me to give myself and my family a better living than what I was getting.”
(Top photo: Damian Strohmeyer / Associated Press)
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