Raiders Lead Running Back Is Lagging Behind League Average

The Las Vegas Raiders are struggling at running back, but they’re not the only team with this problem. Bill Barnwell of ESPN took a different approach to the issues Ashton Jeanty is having, as he cast it in the light of much of the 2025 running back draft class. His take on Jeanty wasn’t good, but it was illuminating, and it certainly wasn’t as obligatory as a lot of the commentary about Jeanty had been. 

Start with Jeanty getting better instead of worse this season. He’s still getting hit behind the line of scrimmage a lot, per Barnwell, with 47.2 percent being “more often than league average.” Jeanty is also getting a significant percentage of his yardage after first contact, with that number at 91.3 percent. 

But the offense is functioning far more efficiently around Jeanty, and you can apply the eye test and see that’s the case. Barnwell’s money take was that Jeanty isn’t doing enough in the situations where he does have an opportunity to break something, and that can also be considered an eye test issue to at least some extent. 

The numbers backing that up are ugly. Jeanty doesn't have a single run of more than 20 yards, and he has just five runs of 10 yards or more on 105 attempts. That 4.8 percent rate is less than half the league average of 10.3 percent for backs with at least 60 carries. Jeanty has also forced missed tackles on just under 18 percent of attempts, below the league average of 25 percent. 

For contrast, Barnwell used rookie running back Mike Washington Jr., who’s averaging 4.9 yards per carry behind the same offensive line. Washington has also been better at generating explosive plays, as he’s picked up 10 or more yards on 15 percent of his carries and already has 21- and 35-yard rushes this season.

That speaks to Jeanty being hurt and banged up, but that’s becoming a secondary issue. Barnwell mentioned breaking short-yardage runs as a way to generate explosive plays, but Jeanty’s never been strong there either, per the writer, as he was well below average in the conversion rate there last year as well. 

Much of what followed in Barnwell’s account was paralysis via analysis, although he did mention Jeanty’s issue with drops, which has hurt him as a receiver. Jeanty still has some ground to cover, both literally and figuratively, to become even a league-average running back, and he’s running out of time to get there.