It doesn’t take long to figure out who’s the work horse for the J.Z. George Jaguars.
Look no further than Montavis Jenkins.
Jenkins returns for his senior year after rushing for 1,241 yards last season. Jenkins is the latest selection of The Winona Times’ Top 10 Players to Watch for the 2018 football season.
Jenkins isn’t hard to spot on the North Carrollton campus with his muscular 6-foot-0, 220-pound frame, looking like a college running back.
Last year, Jenkins played several positions on offense, anything from quarterback to fullback. No matter the position, it included Jenkins running the football.
“He came in as a freshman and was our leading rusher,” J.Z. George coach Ben Burton said. “We did some different stuff with him last year. He played some quarterback and some fullback. He had 1,241 yards last year so he will be a significant part of what we do on offense this year.”
Jenkins has already had a good career with the Jaguars after rushing for 415 yards as a sophomore and 948 as a freshman, giving him a total of 2,604 yards in three years.
“What we are going to do on offense is going to be based around him and his abilities,” Burton said. “We have been a wing-T team and did a good job of utilizing his abilities there. Right now, we are looking at him playing some quarterback with the understanding that he’s a run-first quarterback. He will be running some of the downhill stuff that his is good at.”
Jenkins has already received some college interest from South Alabama, Alcorn State and several junior colleges including Northwest and Copiah-Lincoln. Jenkins said he has plans for the future.
“My first plan is to play junior college football,” Jenkins said. “If that doesn’t work out, I hope to go to college and major in bio-mechanical engineering. But I would like to play football in college though. I think I can play somewhere.”
Burton said he thinks someone is going to get a football player in Jenkins.
“He is a really good kid and a good football player as well,” Burton said. “I personally feel like he can play at the next level. I think he could play at a Division I school if he gets a little bit faster. You just look at his frame, he could probably put on 30 pounds and pretty much play anything. I’m not 100 percent sure that his skill will take him to play running back in college. But I feel like he is a well-rounded enough athlete to be able to play somewhere, perhaps a fullback or blocking back.”
Jenkins has mainly been an offensive player for the Jaguars, primarily because he carries the ball so much.
“He played a little bit of defense last year but it gets to an issue where, because he runs the ball so hard, if you put him on defense, he gets tired,” Burton said. “I would rather him be on the sideline than be on the field taking plays off. At the end of the day, we’ve got to have him running the ball. He had a couple of times last year where he carried it 35 times. He ran for 270 yards twice last year and that’s a good bit for a kid to play both offense and defense. There wasn’t a game where he carries it less than 20 times.”
While Burton looks to Jenkins to carry the load on the offensive side, he needs more from the bruising back.
“His leadership is his best asset,” Burton said. “People look up to him and he could easily sway and take our team in a really good direction. He has built up his skills as a leader and I feel like he has made some great strides over the last six or seven months in that direction.”
The Jaguars finished just 2-9 last year and Jenkins wants to improve on that.
“It was really tough,” Jenkins said of last season. “We had a lot of new players that weren’t used to that type of situation. They weren’t used to that type of game. I believe we are going to be great. We have a lot of players coming back. We have come together as a team. I believe Coach Burton has put us in leadership groups to lead others.”
