Royal's Kaden Jenks top senior at Northwest quarterback camp

ROYAL CITY — A lot of people who understand football talent considered Royal High School’s Kaden Jenks the best quarterback in the state last year, especially at the end of the season.

Best from any classification, that is.

The Tri-City Herald was one good example. It placed Jenks at the head of its regional team, over 4A, 3A and 2A quarterbacks, including the one who led Prosser to the 2A title.

The number of people who see Jenks in the same light this year will surely grow as this season starts. At a camp and competition of the top Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington prep quarterbacks last week, Jenks emerged as No. 2 overall and as the top senior.

The competition was held at Northwest University in Kirkland. The participants were selected by football experts.

Emerging No. 1 was 4A Graham-Kapowsin’s sophomore Dylan Morris. The participants were put through several tests of quarterback skills and were graded on each skill by a panel.

Jenks had no regrets about finishing second. He said Morris earned No. 1. He said Morris was good in every facet of quarterbacking.

Jenks finished the first day in the No. 5 slot. He moved up one spot each of the three succeeding days. He got suggestions from coaches on carrying the ball and his follow through when he throws.

Royal coach Wiley Allred was pleased with the outcome, but he wasn’t effusive with praise. After last year’s constant use of superlatives, there isn’t much left to say.

Allred did say he’s heard more than once that Jenks is a Division I college prospect. He has an offer from Weber State, and other teams recruiting him include Eastern Washington, Portland State, Montana and Montana State.

Allred noted that University of Washington coaches attended the competition and had Jenks under consideration for their final quarterback slot. But they made the offer to a California big-school boy.

If you are a fan of football and haven’t seen Jenks play, you’ll have 10 chances this fall, beginning with a jamboree at Royal on August 26. Of course, Royal’s Knights are expected to return to the state championship game. That would mean 14 chances.

For those of you who didn’t keep up with the Knights last year, they went 14-0. They scored more than 50 points a game and gave up fewer than seven.

One Jenks stat alone was unbelievable: his touchdown to interceptions ratio was 45/2. Collegiate and NFL quarterbacks dream of such a ratio.

Jenks may not be able to match that this year. No quarterback, at any level, does that. On the other hand, he’ll probably do something else unbelievably well.

That could be his running. He has good speed and he is fullback big at 6-2, 215. He was brutal runner at 200 pounds last year.

One thing for sure, the first two full games, Ellensburg here on Sept. 2 and at Zillah on Sept. 9, will test him. The bulldogs are a tough 2A program. Zillah just missed going to Tacoma last year.

The Knights will have targets on their backs. The biggest will be worn by Jenks.

Allred said the offensive line will be fairly new this year and may be a little iffy. Jenks is unconcerned. He noted the boys up front this year will be bigger.

“And they’re working really hard,” he said. “They’re working really hard for that first game.”

Jenks built up to where he is. He quarterbacked the Knights as a freshman. He led them to the playoffs as a sophomore.

Last year, Jenks completed 65 percent of his passes for more than 2,700 yards. The offense was evenly split between his passing and running of Joe Lang and other backs.

At state, Allred went to Jenks’s arm immediately just to surprise the King’s defense.

Jenks was nearly flawless. He connected on 68 percent of his passes (17-25-0), with no interceptions for 242 yards. Jenks had no touchdown passes, but his pin-point effort got the running game into scoring range for a 21-0 halftime lead en route to a 28-7 victory.

He ran in one of the scores himself.