STARKVILLE — As Mississippi State quarterback Nick Fitzgerald took the snap and shuffled to his right in a first-quarter possession against BYU, there was no doubt he had a clear path to the end zone: he could see his lead blocker several yards downfield looking for someone to hit.
That lead blocker was Elgton Jenkins — the same man that started the play by snapping the ball.
Jenkins, now seven games into his first season as MSU’s starting center, has flashed signs of brilliance such as that pulling ability that were unthinkable when he first started. He figures to continue as a pivotal of MSU’s run game as the Bulldogs (5-2, 2-2 Southeastern Conference) travel to Texas A&M (5-2, 3-1 SEC) at 6:15 p.m. Saturday at Kyle Field.
“When you get more reps and get more experience, you’re going to get better,” Fitzgerald said. “The snaps were iffy at first, but that’s to be expected. We worked on it a lot together, he’s put in a lot of work: he comes in, he watches a lot of film to make sure he can lead the offensive line and tell guys what to do sometimes.
“It’s hard to be a freshman out there, so it’s good to have him out there to tell them what to do.”
The snaps Fitzgerald mentioned were the initial bump in Jenkins’ road as starting center. For the first half of the season opener against Charleston Southern, Fitzgerald was catching most snaps below his waist, at times at or below his knees. Jenkins got better in the second half and continued that improvement through the Louisiana Tech game.
Over a month later, those struggles are a distant memory.
“I watched film and I saw the way I was snapping the ball, I fixed those things in practice,” Jenkins said.
With that hole in his game patched over, he grew into the unit leader Fitzgerald described him as. His presence was never more important than it has been in the last month, in which MSU has been without senior left tackle Martinas Rankin after he injured his ankle against Auburn. With freshmen at both tackle spots in that stretch, Stewart Reese to the right and Greg Eiland to the left, Jenkins’ presence proved pivotal.
With Rankin expected to be back this week, Jenkins will have help in that regard. Now he can spend more time on the tricky task of pulling from the center position.
“It’s a skill. We practice it in practice,” Jenkins said. “After snapping the ball, I do like a skip pull and get to the backer.”
By skip pull, Jenkins means a pull in which he keeps his shoulders parallel to the line of scrimmage and moves to the outside by quickly shuffling his feet. Most pulls involve linemen turning their shoulders and flat-out running in the direction they are headed.
It’s not an easy technique to pull off — Stanford is highly regarded for its ability to train offensive linemen to do it almost exclusively. MSU trusts Jenkins to do it because, as Mullen said on the SEC teleconference, “Elgton’s a great athlete.”
Jenkins’ pulls do more than give the ball carrier a lead blocker: they give a wrinkle that most opposing defenses are not programmed to handle quickly.
It’s rather common for defenses to train linebackers to diagnose plays by, among other factors, reading guards. In the case of pulling, since guards are the ones that pull most of the time, detecting guard movement can be the quickest giveaway to what a play is. Offenses have even come to counter that fact by pulling guards on playaction passes, hoping to hold linebackers near the line of scrimmage for an extra half-second to create an opening.
Using Jenkins as the pulling blocker can give MSU that extra step in the run game.
“He has the talent and the ability to pull and that allows you to be more diverse in the scheme,” Mullen said. “You always build your system around the strengths of your players. It’s great if we have a center that can snap and pull, then we’ll snap and pull; if he struggles with it, I wouldn’t be a very good coach if I asked him to do something he doesn’t do very well.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter, @Brett_Hudson
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