When the Las Vegas Raiders drafted RB Ashton Jeanty with the sixth-overall pick in 2025, he had lofty expectations despite going to the worst offense in football.
The Las Vegas Raiders organization is in a much better spot right now than it was at this time last year and even if the team doesn’t make the playoffs, this season should be a good steppingstone moving forward.
The 2025 season for the Raiders was a mess – the coaching staff wasn’t prepared and there were tons of holes within the roster despite having franchise cornerstones in defensive end Maxx Crosby, tight end Brock Bowers and running back Ashton Jeanty.
Crosby and Bowers dealt with injuries, causing them to miss multiple games, while Jeanty suffered behind the worst offensive line in the National Football League. Jeanty’s numbers were great when all things are considered, but after being selected sixth-overall in the 2025 NFL draft, the expectations were lofty.
Jeanty was expected to finish his rookie season with elite numbers that would put him in talks for one of the best rookie running back seasons ever, putting up over 1,500 yards with double-digit touchdowns (something in the realm of Eric Dickerson’s 1983 season), but that wasn’t going to be a reality when you watched the team around him.
Jeanty still rushed for 975 yards and five touchdowns on 266 carries while catching 55 passes for 346 yards and five touchdowns, but his 3.7 yards per carry was among the lowest in the NFL. He was able to create a lot on his own but his offensive line did little to help him.
For most of the year, Jeanty was contacted at or behind the line of scrimmage more than 50 percent of the time, so it’s quite impressive what he was able to accomplish.
Just like last year’s draft, another running back went inside the top 10 and was drafted to a team that is much more than a running back away from being contenders. The Arizona Cardinals selected Notre Dame RB Jeremiyah Love with the third-overall pick, and just like Jeanty, he carries humungous expectations.
Similar to Jeanty, Love has the ability to take over games with his insane speed, power and awareness. He shares the same dual-threat identity that Jeanty has, which should make him a force in Arizona’s offense, but he could run into the same issues that Jeanty did.
NFL.com’s Bucky Brooks believes he could suffer the same fate as Jeanty did in his rookie year, where he might not meet those expectations simply because the team around him won’t give him any help.
Yes, tight end Trey McBride and receivers Michael Wilson and Marvin Harrison Jr. are fine weapons, but Las Vegas had Bowers and Jakobi Meyers (for a while) too.
If you haven’t had the chance to see the Cardinals in action during training camp, it has been extremely ugly. But there’s a chance he can overcome all of that like Saquon Barkley did in 2018 with the New York Giants.
“As a multi-faceted offensive weapon, Love has the potential to instantly make his mark like Saquon Barkley, who earned 2018 Offensive Rookie of the Year honors after piling up 2,028 scrimmage yards and 15 total touchdowns as a one-man show for a Giants team in rebuilding mode,” Brooks wrote Friday.
This is the time to work out the ugliness, but as great of a player as he was in college, it will be hard for Love to outperform what Jeanty did in his rookie campaign. Arizona’s offensive line is better than what Jeanty had to deal with last year, though.
