Ashton Jeanty

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• Camp · Aug 23, 2026Aug 23, 2026

  Ashton Jeanty Camp Update — August 23: The Efficiency Test Gets Postponed

  The Raiders held their first team out of Thursday's game in Houston, so the live-carry test against a real front that last week set up did not happen. No Jeanty charting surfaced from the joint practice either — a quiet week in a backfield whose backups made noise.

• Camp · Aug 16, 2026Aug 17, 2026

  Ashton Jeanty Camp Update — August 16: Six Yards a Carry Is the Number We Asked For

  Jeanty played with the Raiders' starters in the preseason opener and averaged nearly six yards a carry. That per-carry number is exactly the test the June preview set for the year-two bet.

• 2026 PreviewJun 12, 2026

  Ashton Jeanty 2026 Season Preview — what the leap is actually made of

  WATCHLIST — The year-two leap is a bet on Kubiak, not the data. Know which church you're in.

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  Show notes & transcript

  Ashton Jeanty is being drafted like a top-six running back — pick 12 — after finishing seventeenth among backs per game as a rookie. That gap is a bet on the year-two leap. We tested the leap. This episode is about what that bet is actually made of — because it's not made of data.

  The rookie year, honestly told. 321 touches — no rookie in football touched the ball more. 266 carries, 975 yards... and there's the catch: 3.7 a carry. His rushing yards over expected came in at −51 — 40-first of 49 qualified backs. The yardage was made of volume, not of beating his blocking. Now, the mitigation, because it's massive: that blocking belonged to the worst offense in football. Dead last in expected points added. Dead last in rush EPA per attempt. Dead last in yards per carry as a team. Three-and-14. And through all of it, Jeanty kept the fantasy lights on — 55 catches, 10 total touchdowns, thirteenth among backs in total points, with real eruptions: 33 against Chicago, 31 against Houston including a 51-yard touchdown run, his third score of 50-plus on the year. The talent flashed. The context buried it. Eight games under 13 points is what buried-context looks like.

  Career arc? He's one year in — that IS the arc. Workhorse role from day one, broken surroundings, boom-bust output. What you're really asking about is the leap. So here's the most honest 90 seconds in fantasy: this spring we tested the rookie-to-year-two jump for running backs across a full decade of data. The result — the sample's too small to license it. 10 qualifying cases in the modern era. The effect, such as it is, rounds to nothing. We killed the pattern rather than cite it, and our rules say a killed pattern can't be used in either direction. So when someone tells you rookie backs reliably leap, they are selling you a pattern the data cannot back. And in fairness — when someone tells you they reliably don't, same answer. The data is silent. The bet is naked.

  What the data does say: nothing fades him. His touchdown share sits under the regression line — five rushing scores on 321 touches is starvation, and starvation doesn't regress, it recovers. No aging flag at 22. No workload flag we'd trust — we tested the 300-touch curse too, and killed it. The profile is a workhorse role with depressed efficiency and depressed touchdowns, both plausibly context. Which makes him the cleanest pure situation bet on the board.

  And the situation is the whole show. The new regime is in and it's built around him: head coach Klint Kubiak — whose system leans on the run game and play-action — has said publicly they want to put pressure on Jeanty, per the offseason reports. The quarterback room was rebuilt twice over: Kirk Cousins signed in free agency, Fernando Mendoza went first overall in April, and by June's OTA reports Cousins was taking the first-team reps with the veteran expected to start early. And the line got a real upgrade, not a promised one — Las Vegas made Tyler Linderbaum the highest-paid center in football in March. Every input that produced last year's dead-last offense got replaced. If you wanted to design a context-flip experiment for a volume runner, it would look like this. It still has to actually flip: −51 over expected wasn't all the line's fault.

  So the price. Pick 12, sixth back off the board, July first snapshot — paying for a two-tier jump from what he just produced per game. Verdict: watchlist — and we mean the word. We can't underwrite the leap; we can't rule it out; the one pattern that would settle it died in testing. If you draft him at 12, draft him knowing exactly what your faith is in. It's not the data. It's Kubiak. That's not a criticism — context bets win leagues every year. It's just a different religion than the receipts, and you should know which church you're in. The honest counter, also out loud: per-game he was already better than the rank shows in functional weeks, the receiving floor is real, and if the touchdowns merely normalize he pays the price back fast.

  September watch list, and this one's concrete: yards over expected per carry in the first month — that number flipping positive is the entire thesis confirming; it staying negative is your exit signal. The goal-line role — five rushing touchdowns on that workload has nowhere to go but up if the offense functions. And the catches — 55 as a rookie is the floor that makes the wait affordable. He's one of your guys? This show covers your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.

• 2025 ReviewMay 11, 2026

  Ashton Jeanty 2025 Season in Review

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  Show notes & transcript

  Ashton Jeanty finished his rookie year as the number 11 running back in total PPR scoring and the number 16 running back in PPR per game — and the gap between those ranks tells you almost everything. He got the workhorse usage you draft a top-10 back for, but efficiency and team context dragged the per-game number to the middle of the pack. Jeanty played all 17 games on a 3 and 14 Raiders team that finished dead last in offensive expected points added, dead last in rushing expected points added per attempt, and dead last in team yards per carry. He was the engine of one of the worst offenses in football, and volume kept him fantasy-relevant even when the blocking, the game scripts, and the surrounding cast did not.

  Now let's get into the numbers. Jeanty handled 266 carries for 975 yards — a 3.7 yards per carry average — with 5 rushing touchdowns, and he chipped in 55 catches on 73 targets for 346 yards and 5 more scores through the air. That receiving role is the quiet reason he finished 11th in total PPR; the rushing efficiency alone would not have gotten him there. His rushing yards over expected came in at minus 50.8 on the season, minus 0.2 per attempt, ranking 41st among qualified runners — raw yardage was a product of volume, not beating what the blocking gave him. Game to game, this was boom-or-bust, not a steady floor. Three games above 24 PPR points, including a 33.5 against the Bears and a 31.8 against the Texans. But eight games under 13, and four under 10 — 6 carries for 7 yards against Dallas, 6 for 21 in the Kansas City shutout, 10 for 30 against Denver. When the Raiders' offense functioned, Jeanty smashed. When it cratered — and it cratered often — he went with it.

  The play that captures the year is the Week 16 run at Houston. Fourth quarter, second and 7, Raiders down 14 to 23, ball at the Texans' 51. Jeanty took it up the middle and went 51 yards to the house — a plus 4.77 expected points play, his third touchdown run of 50-plus yards on the season alongside the 64-yarder against Chicago and a 60-yard receiving score, also at Houston. That's the Jeanty fantasy identity in one snapshot: an offense losing by multiple scores, the volume back finally cracking one long enough to salvage a 31.8-point fantasy day in a game his team still lost by two. The ceiling was real and explosive. It just didn't show up every week.