As the Las Vegas Raiders selected Ashton Jeanty in the NFL Draft, Pete Carroll’s phone began lighting up.
A running back, with the sixth overall selection?
Fellow running back Marshawn Lynch wanted to celebrate with the head coach who oversaw four of his five Pro Bowl seasons. So he called. And called.
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“He’s been calling all evening here about it, he’s pretty fired up,” Carroll said late Thursday as the first round wound down. “Throughout his career, [Lynch] found a physical way to bank off people and bounce and just keep alive. [Jeanty]’s a player who shows that kind of style — that’s one aspect of his style, the burst and other things he does as well.
“There are similarities in his ability to make plays when it doesn’t feel like anything is there.”
It’s too early to crown Jeanty as the next Lynch, who currently paces the rookie by 10,413 professional rushing yards and 85 professional touchdowns. But Jeanty’s talent and character compelled the Raiders to buck several league trends as the club awarded him the highest pick of any running back since Saquon Barkley’s second overall pick from the New York Giants.
Las Vegas Raiders running back Ashton Jeanty and head coach Pete Carroll hope to enjoy more smiles together in the 2025 NFL season. (Heidi Fang/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(Las Vegas Review-Journal via Getty Images)
The timing perhaps isn’t coincidental. Raiders first-year general manager John Spytek watched what Barkley did last year in his first year with the Philadelphia Eagles, whose Super Bowl run he anchored.
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Spytek thought back to his own time as a University of Michigan outside linebacker and considered league wisdom on how to maximize first-round draft picks. Then he ignored it.
“I just don’t know where we got to a place where we don’t feel like running backs are valued,” Spytek said in a news conference previewing the 2025 draft. “We just saw Saquon Barkley change the Eagles in one year and now they had a great team around them and it was adding an elite player.
“When you sit where we sit, the idea is to add elite players at any position. I don’t try to devalue any certain position.”
The Raiders also didn’t devalue diverting from popular opinion on their draft strategy.
Drafting Brock Bowers then Ashton Jeanty gives Raiders rare combo
Drafting Jeanty sixth overall was expensive but not wild. The Atlanta Falcons drafted Bijan Robinson eighth two years ago, and before Barkley’s second pick in 2018, the Dallas Cowboys took Ezekiel Elliott fourth in 2016.
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Drafting running backs highly happens, if less often than in earlier NFL history.
But the devaluation, some say, comes more on the later contract consideration of wear and tear than it does on the value of a rookie running back.
“RBs contribute more their first 4-5 years than many other positions,” one NFC executive said. “The fifth-year option will be worthwhile. Just think it’s tricky because in all likelihood don’t want to be extending him after then.”
Those second-contract considerations have deeply influenced first-round draft trends.
Club draft philosophies factor in myriad data points, from roster gaps to relative position depth in the draft class to salary cap considerations.
Sign a quarterback to a megadeal? Teams have all but accepted they’ll need to pay light elsewhere to carry the contracts that have hit $60 million per year. Paying elite pass rushers, receivers and tackles can similarly hamper teams.
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The specter of those contracts have encouraged many teams to spend prime draft capital, and especially first-round picks with fifth-year contract options, on positions that will generate the most “surplus value.”
The short version of the philosophy: the more expensive the veteran contract gets at a position, the more valuable it is to have a player at that position on a rookie wage-scale deal.
That, plus the supply at some of what the league calls its “premium” positions, sends those players often climbing draft boards.
But for two straight years, the Raiders have looked another direction. Drafting tight end Brock Bowers with the 13th overall pick last year and Jeanty with the sixth overall pick this year, the Raiders capitalized on teams prioritizing premium needs to snag the best players at their respective positions in back-to-back years.
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The two-year plan wasn’t a two-year plan in the traditional sense: Vegas has a new head coach, general manager and even highly influential minority owner who influenced this draft after not being there to select Bowers. Two regimes rather than one carried this out.
The trend is nonetheless unusual, the Raiders becoming just the fourth team since 2000 to spend first-round draft picks on tight end and running back within two years, data from TruMedia and NFL Research found.
Most teams prioritize value another way. But for the Raiders, whom Carroll described as a team that “right now, we’re building” rather than ready … could it work?
Many NFL talent evaluators considered this draft to hold three “blue-chip,” or top-shelf talents:
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Colorado receiver/defensive back Travis Hunter, whom the Jacksonville Jaguars selected second overall
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Penn State edge rusher Abdul Carter, whom the Giants selected third
So once the Raiders had decided they weren’t a team afraid to draft a running back highly, it wasn’t difficult to decide to draft this running back at six.
The bulk of Jeanty’s 4,769 college rushing yards and 50 rushing touchdowns came in his final three years, when Jeanty cemented himself in the FBS record books.
His 2,601 rushing yards last season? Second in FBS history. His 2,739 yards from scrimmage? Third in FBS history.
And Jeanty particularly thrived in two advanced statistical categories. Never before had an FBS player amassed 1,970 rushing yards after contact and never before had an FBS player forced 164 missed tackles.
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“He’s not a guy who’s just gonna run into the wall,” Carroll said. “He’s going to find his way for the most space available with this marvelous creativity that terrific running backs have always shown to me. … He can run with power, he can run in short-yardage areas and find the spacing he needs to make the plays.
“He has the ability to do all of it for us.”
Jeanty prides himself on that versatility from running with field vision and tackle-breaking to adjusting his role as needed to support the team.
He watched Lynch growing up just as Lynch, blowing up Carroll’s phone, now plans to watch him. He sees the similarities and wants to emulate the physicality and play-making alike.
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In Lynch’s image or not, Jeanty is ready to show the Raiders why their pick was the right one and the league why running backs have yet to go out of fashion.
“I’m gonna show everyone why the position is valuable,” Jeanty said. “It is great to take an exceptional running back in the first round.”