‘He is freaky.’ Why 6-foot-7 receiver EJ Jenkins could get more looks for USC
The catch won’t show up on any stat sheet. There’s no video of it, no evidence it even happened — other than the wide-eyed descriptions from South Carolina coaches.
Shane Beamer called it one of the best catches he’s seen in his life.
It happened last Thursday, two days before USC’s 23-14 win over Troy. Gathered in the team’s indoor practice facility and running a two-minute drill, the Gamecocks offense ran a post route over the middle of the field to seldom-used transfer tight end/wide receiver E.J. Jenkins.
The play looked dead from the start. An easy interception. The defensive back had his hands up, ready to close them around the ball, when suddenly the gargantuan 6-foot-7, 243-pound Jenkins leaped into the air and — with full extension — reached back with his left hand to pluck the ball from the air and zipped into the end zone.
“He made one of the most remarkable catches I’ve ever seen, to the point where you don’t even realize he caught the ball,” said Beamer, describing the play with his trademark enthusiasm. “I still don’t understand how he caught it.”
Beamer and the offensive coaching staff have been waiting for that kind of breakthrough moment for Jenkins, waiting for the freakish athlete from Fredericksburg, Virginia to make use of his uncommon size and bully defenders in the secondary.
Along with quarterback Jason Brown — a former high school teammate — Jenkins transferred to USC from FCS school St. Francis in February. Jenkins’ arrival was met with intrigue and fanfare, if only for the mere fact that his physical measurables jump off the page. The redshirt senior caught a touchdown in USC’s spring game, and throughout the offseason coaches and players talked about his mismatch potential and how USC wanted to employ him both as a receiver out wide and as a tight end.
Yet through the first three weeks of the season, Jenkins rarely saw the field. He didn’t register his first catch until Week 3 against Kentucky. Jenkins found himself frustrated by the lack of playing time, at one point cryptically posting to Twitter in late September: “God works in mysterious ways. I trust his plan and timing.”
When Jenkins approached the coaching staff about it, their response was simple and direct.
“We flat-out told him, ‘You want to play more? Practice better,’ ” Beamer said. “And practice with more sense of urgency, and practice with more physicality and practice with more speed and intensity.
“And he did.”
Jenkins took that direction to heart, determined to make a splash on gamedays. That work in practice didn’t go unnoticed. Against Troy, Jenkins saw the field early, corralling two passes for 28 yards, one of them a touchdown near the right pylon that gave the Gamecocks a lead in the second quarter.
This week, both Beamer and offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield praised the effort they’ve seen from Jenkins in practice, and they’ve both said they expect Jenkins’ unique role within the offense to continue to expand.
That’s welcome news for Jenkins, who’s been biding his time waiting for an opportunity.
“It was frustrating, but I just kept my head down, just kept working on a consistent basis week after week, just improving the critiques and just making sure I have a better sense of urgency at practice,” Jenkins said. “So ever since I started to focus on that and made it my main thing during practice, make sure I moved fast all the time, it just worked out for me.”
‘He is freaky’
When Jenkins crossed into the Williams-Brice Stadium end zone against Troy, the first thing he noticed was the noise. The volume was deafening.
“There was a lot of stuff going on through my head, like not being used to seeing so many people when you get in the end zone,” Jenkins said, smiling. “It was so loud, compared to St. Francis with maybe like 700 people there. It was a good feeling to have.”
Jenkins was a big fish in a small pond at St. Francis, a school located in Loretto, Pennsylvania. During his redshirt sophomore year, with Brown as his quarterback, Jenkins set a school record with 13 receiving touchdowns, catching 39 passes for 779 yards.
Bear Fenimore, St. Francis’ starting quarterback before Brown, threw Jenkins his first college touchdown pass, and he remembers how Jenkins separated himself from the other team’s receivers even at a young age.
“Gosh, he is freaky,” Fenimore told The State. “Obviously, he’s 6-foot-7, looks like a Calvin Johnson-type player. He’s fast. He’s physical. One thing I liked about E.J. is that, being around a lot of receivers, when they don’t get the ball, sometimes the effort’s not there, especially when it comes to perimeter blocking. But E.J., I can’t tell you how many pancakes he had from the receiver position.
“There’s so many ways you can use him, you can obviously use him kind of like a Kyle Pitts type mold when he was at Florida. You can put him out wide and goal line situations ... he’s really a jack-of-all-trades.”
The South Carolina coaches had the same idea when they finally got their hands on Jenkins this spring. Though Jenkins has played wide receiver his entire life, his size lends itself more to the tight end position, with its increased physicality and emphasis on blocking.
Jenkins spent most of the summer and training camp working at tight end, learning the intricacies of a position he had never played before.
“At first playing tight end was hard,” Jenkins said. “It was definitely hard, especially going to practice and having to block J.J. (Enagbare). Coming out of a three-point stance was definitely difficult for me. But as we came in from February, to summer, to camp, there’s been big progress from there.”
It would be a mistake to call Jenkins a tight end. It would also be a mistake to call him a true wide receiver. When asked which position he plays, Jenkins said both. Beamer said that was a “good answer.”
The Gamecocks have made an effort to be multiple on offense in the way they use players like Jenkins, fellow tight end Jaheim Bell, running back Juju McDowell and receiver Dakereon Joyner. Bell has seen time at fullback and split out wide, McDowell has lined up at slot receiver, and Joyner has his own offensive package where he plays quarterback.
Jenkins is the latest experiment, and all signs point to him seeing more playing time.
“He’s done everything we’ve asked him to do,” quarterback Luke Doty said. “And from an offensive standpoint, whether it be, ‘Hey, go play tight end and block this end, or line up out wide and go catch a jump ball,’ those are some of the things that he’s able to do.
“And he’s able to do a lot, so I think we’re gonna just continue to find ways to get him in there and utilize his size and ability and just allow him to go make plays and let him play fast because he is one hell of a playmaker for us.”
