Raiders' Ashton Jeanty could use a breakout in Allegiant Stadium preseason debut

Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

On the second play of the team period during the Las Vegas Raiders’ joint practice with the San Francisco 49ers on Thursday at their Henderson headquarters, Ashton Jeanty was gone.

The Raiders’ rookie, first-round running back took a handoff, made one cut and zoomed 70 yards untouched into the end zone.

The 49ers may have stopped him short of the score if it was a real game but only after Jeanty would have picked up a big chunk of yards. That’s something last year’s Heisman Trophy runner-up out of Boise State hasn’t done much of now nearly a month into training camp.

“Today, he made a play,” quarterback Geno Smith said of Jeanty after practice. “I won’t mention it, but like, it was something we did yesterday, and we didn’t get it right. And then today he came out, we got it perfect…I thought Ashton did a great job as always, but he definitely took another step and another jump today.”

The Raiders better hope that continues going into today’s second preseason game at 1 p.m. at Allegiant Stadium against the 49ers.

While coach Pete Carroll has not explicitly announced he would play his staters, he strongly hinted that everyone could see the field for the second straight week.

There would be no better place for a Jeanty breakout than in his first game at his new home stadium.

The organization has no long-term concerns over the 5-foot-8, 208-pound running back, but it’s also impossible to ignore that early returns haven’t matched the hype. Jeanty hasn’t looked quite fitting of a No. 6 overall draft pick or first-round fantasy football selection yet.

Not only has he been mostly quiet in practices, but he was a nonfactor in the Raiders’ “mock game” at Allegiant two weeks ago despite a 38-36 final score. Then, last week in the preseason opener against the Seahawks, Jeanty had three carries for -1 yards.

“We were real basic, and we didn’t get the kind of movement we wanted,” Carroll said. “Ashton didn’t get a chance.”

Jeanty indeed didn’t have much space to run as he was met near the line of scrimmage on his first (a 3-yarder) and final (no gain) rushing attempts. A blitzer met him in the backfield for a loss of four yards on the second carry.

A Jeanty skeptic would say the plays illustrate that it won’t be as easy for him to break tackles on the professional level as it was playing in a midmajor college conference like the Mountain West. His first tackler came in from the side at the type of angle he largely was able to run through at Boise State.

The run for the loss of four looked more unavoidable, though Jeanty spun into extra trouble.

Jeanty believers would counter that there’s still a perilously small sample size, and none of the snaps he’s logged so far count for anything. The Raiders are going to do everything they can to put him in a position to succeed and feed him opportunities once the games that matter begin.

“I say it’s like a car, it’s got the engine, and we want to run the ball,” Jeanty said of the Raiders’ offense earlier this summer. “So, I'm going to try my best to make this offense run, and we've got great receivers, great tight ends, a great quarterback, and it'll start with the run game.”

Jeanty has gotten the overwhelming majority of work with the Raiders’ starting offense, but the reemergence of 2023 standout Zamir White has made him slightly less than the stand-alone bell cow running back some projected.

Veteran free-agent Raheem Mostert has also gotten his share of snaps. Promising holdover Sincere McCormick appears to have slipped below White and Mostert in the running back competition while Carroll praised depth options Dylan Laube and Chris Collier after the Seahawks game.

The latter pair of second-year runners were the ones to spark the Raiders’ run game in the second half as Collier had nine carries for 42 yards while Laube got six touches for 40 yards and a touchdown.

Still, whoever ultimately makes the roster among the running backs will go into the season as complements to Jeanty.

“Our job right now is just getting him lined up, having him understand what our offense, what our scheme is, and then let him go in terms of his running style,” Raiders offensive coordinator Chip Kelly said. “His running style is his running style, and it's gotten him this far, so we're going to continue to ride that."

But the most encouraging part of Jeanty’s training camp hasn’t involved the run game. Rather, it’s how much the Raiders have used him as part of the passing attack.

There were questions on if Jeanty was an NFL-ready receiving back, but Smith sure seems to think so. He’s checked down to Jeanty for short passes frequently.

“I feel like that’s a part of my game that wasn’t showing that much at Boise State,” Jeanty said. “So, we're hoping to bring that to life some more."

Pass protection is one area where Jeanty says he’s been hard at work to improve in order to buy Smith extra time when he’s not part of the quarterback’s route progression. Ball security is also a minor concern for the rookie as he’s fumbled on a couple occasions in training camp during individual drills.

That’s all normal rookie stuff training camp is meant to address, but Jeanty is under larger scrutiny after becoming the highest running back drafted since Saquon Barkley went No. 2 overall in 2018.

The Raiders believe Jeanty has the skillset to someday develop into a difference-maker the level of Barkley, who led the NFL in rushing and won the Offensive Player of the Year award last year. There haven’t been many flashes of it to this point, but one did surface against the 49ers on the practice field Thursday and maybe the next will come today at Allegiant.

“He learns and he grows with every single experience,” Smith said. “I think that's something that's going to make him so much of a great player, because he's getting better by day.”