Backup aims to prove he’s a quality pivot
Jennings praised, but can he ignite B.C. Lions’ sluggish offence?
The Green Bay Packers are about to meet the Kansas City Chiefs in a nationally televised Monday night game with a chance to go 3-0 for the first time since 2011, when they went 15-1.
But that’s not what got secondyear Packers wide receiver Jeff Janis excited Friday. He learned his college teammate at Saginaw Valley State, Jon Jennings, was about to make his professional debut as a starting quarterback in a Canadian Football League game between the B.C. Lions and Edmonton Eskimos.
The 4-7 Lions play the Eskimos at Commonwealth Stadium Saturday, the only opponent with a winning record (Edmonton is 8-4) the Lions have defeated this season.
Jennings, the 23-year-old rookie getting his chance because of injuries to Travis Lulay and John Beck, hopes to make it two.
“He (Jennings) throws a better ball than any quarterback I’ve caught a ball from, with the exception of Aaron (Rodgers),” Janis gushed in a telephone interview. “He’s a special player, talented. He can throw a hard, tight spiral into any window. He reminds me of Russell Wilson a little bit.”
Though he has been playing mainly on special teams, Janis is considered one of the Packers’ more athletic receivers, one about to become more prominent as he’s knitted into a more diversified and dynamic offence.
Drafted by the Packers in the seventh round in 2014, he was not a heavily recruited player coming out of high school in Tawas City, Mich. Only one Division I team, Central Michigan, had some interest. It didn’t pan out.
He ended up at Division II Saginaw Valley State, as did Jennings, who grew up in the shadow of Ohio State University and was passed over by the Buckeyes and other Big 10 powers.
“I was a late bloomer,” said Janis, who sprouted to 6-foot-3, 220 pounds in college and led all Division II players in receiving yards by the end of his junior year. “Jon had a good feel for my speed and how I played. I didn’t have to do much. I just had to run down the field, and he’d put the ball on the money.”
Janis is one of 15 NFL players who were groomed in colleges that form the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC), which has sent numerous players to the CFL, including Calgary Stampeders rush end Charleston Hughes, Montreal Alouettes left tackle Josh Bourke and Jennings, the GLIAC Player of the Year in 2013. Janis, his favourite target, was named Offensive Back of the Year.”
“There’s certainly talent everywhere,” Jennings said after the Lions arrived in Edmonton Friday. “It’s tough because Division I players get all the prestige. They’re ranked this and that in the draft. If we actually came out and competed straight up against these players, it would be wide open.”
Jennings, who relieved Beck in last Friday’s 35-23 loss to the Calgary Stampeders, after the starter suffered a strained pectoral tendon, is matched Saturday against Mike Reilly, the Edmonton veteran quarterback who started his CFL career with the Lions and is himself a Division II grad (Central Washington).
Like Reilly, who also got a look from Green Bay after graduation, Jennings didn’t have the ‘it’ factor and went undrafted. Yet that didn’t keep the Packers, Chiefs, Detroit Lions and Saskatchewan Roughriders from taking a closer look at him in rookie, free-agent and mini-camps.
Jennings was thrown figuratively to the lions last Friday and the Lions thrown literally to Jennings, but the cool-headed quarterback stared down stage fright and hung in to complete 15 of 27 passes for 252 yards against the defending Grey Cup champions.
“Expectations come with this game,” Jennings says. “We’re at this level for a reason. I want to play well enough to get the W.
I want to go out there and prove people right.”