Too Deep 96 #2: Ashton Jeanty, Suddenly Saquon.
Don't ask what the best RB prospect in years can do for your team. Ask what your team can do for the best RB prospect in years.
Today’s Too Deep 96 spotlight is on Ashton Jeanty, RB, Boise State
Jeanty is the best running back prospect since Saquon Barkley. And what a year this is to be the best running back prospect since Saquon Barkley!
Jeanty is just 5-foot-9 and 215 pounds but runs with the power of a 230-pounder. The first would-be tackler is often flicked from his windshield. He makes quick jump cuts when searching for holes and can make 90-degree turns on a dime. He pinballs through open-field traffic, can string together moves and has a third gear when he sees daylight.
Jeanty’s game film against opponents like Oregon, Oregon State and Washington State looks like a typical draftable prospect’s season-long highlight reel. I didn’t bother watching his 267-yard, 6-touchdown performance against Georgia Southern because there were five other 200-plus rushing yard games to choose from in 2024, most of them against Pac-12 competition.
Sports Info Solutions credits Jeanty with 84 broken tackles in 2024, the highest total in the nation. Cam Skattebo of Arizona State ranked second with just 49 broken tackles; Jeanty came close to lapping the field.
Jeanty also led the nation by causing 40 missed tackles. He broke or eluded tackles on 33.2% of carries, the highest figure in the nation among players with 200-plus rushing attempts.
Jeanty’s 84 broken tackles in 2024 were also the highest total in the Sports Info Solutions database since 2018, when the stat service began separating broken and missed tackles into separate categories. The second-highest figure: 62 broken tackles by Clemson’s Travis Etienne in 2019 and Ball State’s Carson Steele in 2022. Jeanty had many more rushes than Etienne or Steele, but breaking 35% more tackles than anyone else in a seven-year data sample is remarkable under any circumstances.
Jeanty averaged 4.8 yards after contact per attempt in 2024, the highest figure in the nation; Skattebo was second at 3.9. Jeanty’s YAC-per-attempt ranks second in the all time SIS database, dating back in this case to 2016; Bryce Love averaged 5.0 YAC-per-attempt for Stanford in 2017. But Love rushed 262 times to Jeanty’s 374. Rate stats get dragged down by central tendency as attempts increase, so Jeanty’s 102 extra carries (often against defenses focused almost entirely on stopping him) make his ability to rack up yards after contact even more remarkable.
(Barkley maxed out at 3.5 YAC-per-attempt in 2016 as a collegian. That’s a fine figure for a featured rusher at a major program. He was credited with 76 missed-plus-broken tackles in 2016.)
Speaking of defenses focused on stopping him, Jeanty rushed into 8+ man boxes 98 times in 2024, the second-highest total in the nation. Army’s Bryson Daily ranked first with 187 rushes into heavy boxes, while fellow cadet Kanye Udoh ranked third with 96. Army runs a wingbone offense which forces opponents to crowd the line. So Jeanty ran into more stacked boxes than anyone playing in a conventional offense. He averaged a remarkable 4.3 yards per carry on those rushes.
The only non-nitpicky knock on Jeanty, besides his ordinary size, is his 372-carry workload, the highest figure at the FBS level since Derrick Henry rushed 395 times in 2015. Henry turned out just fine. But mileage can always become an issue. Jeanty will either be a perennial 1,000-yard rusher on his first contract or damaged goods. The likelihood of the latter is slight but not zero.
Jeanty is the second-best prospect to Travis Hunter in this class based on pure “great at football-ness.” But teams without settled quarterback situations and semi-stable offenses cannot splurge on first-round running backs. The Browns, Cowboys, Broncos and Steelers could all benefit meaningfully from Jeanty’s services in the middle of the first round.
But I am tickled by the thought of the Giants drafting Jeanty third, congratulating themselves for their acumen, wasting his gifts for five years and then sending him down the turnpike to Philly. It won’t happen, but NFL history tends to rhyme, and some other woeful team may overdraft Jeanty, only to discover they just aren’t really worthy of his services.
What sold me on Jeanty as, say, a top-12 pick was hearing him interviewed during Super Bowl week. Reminded me of Marshall Faulk in terms of potential football IQ.
So the whole theory of don't draft Running Backs high in the draft is based on the fact you can find RBs in the 3rd and 4th Rounds, and because Running Back is an easy position to see output, people see these 3rd and 4th round running backs doing well and pat themselves on the back for their advanced statnerd acument for seeing that this means RBs aren't worth wasting First Round picks on.
But best I can tell there are loads of guards, tackles and even Defensive Ends who get drafted in the 3rd and 4th Rounds who have long producing NFL Careers, but nobody says "well as a stats nerd this means I see that you don't need to draft Guards or Tackles in the first round"
My point being this has gone way to far and people claiming their advanced stat acumen is why are really showing exactly the opposite