The Las Vegas Raiders drafted Washington because Klint Kubiak wanted him, and Ashton Jeanty is the guy he inherited.
The Las Vegas Raiders currently have some uncertainty at running back, and no one knows quite how it’s going to turn out. Last year’s top draft pick, Ashton Jeanty, recently experienced a serious leg injury that turned out to be an ankle sprain, and by all reports Jeanty will be ready for opening day, although no one knows exactly how ready he’ll be.
Meanwhile, Mike Washington Jr. just had a brilliant preseason. The Raiders drafted him in the fourth round despite some controversy over his injury situation, as some of Washington’s medicals have him as a serious knee injury waiting to happen.
But Kubiak doesn’t buy into that. If he did, he never would have “stood on the table” for Washington during this year’s draft, according to GM John Spytek per an article from Sam Warren of The Athletic.
“He stood on the table for that kid at the start of Day 3 (of the NFL Draft),” Spytek said. “(He said) ‘This is the perfect scheme fit. We can make this player into a good player. He has what we’re looking for.’”
Kubiak’s comments may sound like ordinary draft day fodder, but in hindsight they’re more than a little loaded, especially now that Jeanty is hurt. The big takeaway is that Washington is Kubiak’s guy, while Jeanty is the guy he inherited.
This matters a lot in the NFL, especially in the kind of situation Kubiak finds himself now. He inherited an atrocious roster that just went 3-14, and Kubiak spent much of the spring and summer doing a slow-motion purge. He’s replacing underperforming, marginal players with “his guys,” with the latest evidence of that coming during roster cutdowns.
Jeanty isn’t that, of course. He’s a talented but undersized running back who’s underperformed to date, and he’s been given a mulligan so far due to the awful offensive line he was stuck behind last year.
Washington is a rookie, so the normal progression here would have been to have him take snaps behind Jeanty and either fill the backup role or start to step up. Instead, though, Washington did that during the preseason, with some eye-opening runs that made you hit “replay” to make sure this was a Raiders running back out in the open field.
Kubiak has done all he can since Jeanty’s injury to dispel the idea that Jeanty has just been replaced, but he won’t spell out what the snap count is going to be. But would anyone be surprised at this point if Washington outplays Jeanty by a lot on Sept. 13 against the Miami Dolphins?
