2025 Rookie Profile: RB Ashton Jeanty (Fantasy Football)
You know the name. Who doesn’t?! Labeled by many as the ‘best RB prospect since Saquon Barkley,’ Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty is already a highly coveted dynasty fantasy football asset, being ranked as a Top-10 dynasty RB before ever taking a snap in the NFL. With his insane college production profile and elite projected draft capital, Jeanty looks like a guy who could be a cornerstone of fantasy football rosters for years to come.
Let’s take a look at his journey through college, his production profile, measurables and tape to get a sense of just how good this guy can be in the NFL. For context, NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah has Jeanty as his third overall prospect on his initial Big Board while The Athletic’s Dane Brugler and PFF both have him as the fifth-best player in the Draft. Spoiler – He’s good!
Editors Note: This article is part of our Rookie Profile series going on until the 2025 NFL Draft. For more on each rookie, check out Andy, Mike, and Jason’s exclusive rookie rankings and production profiles found only in the Dynasty Pass, part of the UDK+ for 2025.
College Production Profile
Before we dive into Jeanty’s journey through Boise State, let’s first start with his unique story out of high school. Because Jeanty’s father was in the Navy, he spent most of his middle and early high school years overseas in Italy, which is where he learned to play sports, namely basketball and football. Upon returning to the states, Jeanty and his family moved to Frisco, Texas where he attended Lone Star High School. Fun fact – that’s the same high school where Marvin Mims went to school before going to play his college ball at OU. Given his late start as a high school player in the US, Jeanty did not have a lot of recruiting interest out of high school. He was labeled as a 3-star prospect by a lot of the major recruiting outlets, and as a result, he ended up at Boise State despite running for over 1,800 yards as a high school senior.
Once he got on the field in Boise, Jeanty forced a timeshare as a true Freshman before exploding for massive yardage and TD totals as a bell cow during his Sophomore and Junior seasons. Jeanty’s 2024 season was one for the record books as his 2,601 rushing yards this past fall ranks second all-time behind Barry Sanders’ 2,628 (1988) on the FBS’ single-season record list. Thanks to his gaudy production and video game type numbers, Jeanty won the Doak Walker Award as the nation’s top RB, and he became the second RB over the last 20 years to win the Maxwell Award. The only other RB to win that award in recent years? Some dude named Derrick Henry. As for the Doak Walker Award, the hit rate for fantasy on these guys is pretty insane in recent years…
https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/awards/walker.html
If you log into our Production Profiles in the Dynasty Pass, you are going to see lots of green in Jeanty’s profile. During his final year at Boise, he accounted for a ridiculous 70% of his team’s rush attempts per game, 77% of his team’s rushing yards per game and 42% of the Broncos’ total yardage. For those that aren’t familiar with the context around those numbers, those percentages are B-nanas. It resulted in a 43% Dominator Rating, which is pretty clearly one of the best numbers in this class. Simply put, there’s no holes you can poke in Jeanty’s production profile, especially considering he posted a 43/569/ stat line as a pass catcher during his second season.
In that 2023 season where he posted over 500 receiving yards, he accounted for 23% of the team’s receiving yards. How unique is it for a running back to average over 20% of their team’s receiving yards? Since 2013, we have only two Day 1 RBs drafted that exceeded that threshold in a single collegiate season: Christian McCaffrey and Jahmyr Gibbs.
The man is an unstoppable force as a runner, and he can catch the football. It’s everything we’re looking for in a potential NFL star.
Measurables
Just about every part of Jeanty’s profile is highly, highly indicative of a future fantasy star, but if there’s one hole to poke here (there really isn’t but for the sake of conversation), it’s that Jeanty is pretty clearly shorter than most NFL RB1s, and he’s noticeably shorter than the other top RB prospects in this class. For context, there have only been six RBs 5’9″ or shorter drafted in the first round since 2010: Jahvid Best, Mark Ingram, Trent Richardson, Doug Martin, Clyde Edwards-Helaire and Jahmyr Gibbs. Given his compact frame at 215 pounds, I’m not really all that worried about it, but I did find it interesting.
I’m interested to see where Jeanty weighs in at the NFL Combine in a week and whether or not he decides to do any testing to give us some data there, but much like Marvin Harrison Jr. from last year’s class, he really doesn’t have any reason to go out there and test. His body of work speaks for itself, and he’s a lock to hear his name called in the first round of April’s NFL Draft. In other words, not much is going to change over the next two months in terms of his NFL Draft stock, regardless of what happens in Indy.
What’s On Tape
Games viewed: Oregon (2024), Penn State (2024), Washington State (2024), Utah State (2024), San Diego State (2023), Colorado State (2023)
1. Jeanty’s contact balance and tackle breaking ability is top notch.
By now, you’ve probably seen all the highlight reel plays where Jeanty is breaking multiple tackles on the same play while ripping off a 50-yard TD run. Don’t get me wrong, I love those too, but I really love this play against Penn State. He ‘only’ picks up 8 or 9 yards on this run, but as you’ll see, he gets hit right at the line of scrimmage and refuses to go down despite five or six PSU defenders hitting him at some point throughout the play. Jeanty broke the FBS record for missed tackles forced with a ridiculous 151 of them last season. Plays like this are why he led the nation with over 1,900 yards after contact per PFF.
2. Plenty of reps as a pass catcher, but he’s also willing to compete in pass pro.
We’ve already touched on Jeanty’s receiving profile a bit when discussing his college production, but I wanted to highlight his pass protection here a bit. For RBs to make the leap to the next level and be true three-down bell cows that we love so much in fantasy, they’ve got to be able to get on the field in obvious passing situations and earn the trust of their QB and coaches in pass protection. While Jeanty is very willing to compete in pass pro, especially against blitzing LBs and safeties, I do wonder how he’ll hold up against bigger and faster players at the next level. Per PFF, Jeanty’s 46.6 pass blocking grade ranked 156th out of 253 qualified FBS running backs last season.
3. In addition to toughness and tackle breaking, Jeanty certainly has enough speed to pick up chunk gains.
Ashton Jeanty had 63 runs of 10+ yards a year ago and was 12th in the country among all qualified backs in breakaway rush rate (52.6%). In his career at Boise, Jeanty’s 46.7% career mark in that metric showcases his ability to burst into the second level and take off when he sees daylight.
Fantasy Outlook
What do we look for in college RB prospects for fantasy? A ton of production, an early breakout, a pass catching profile and NFL Draft capital. Check, check, check and check! Jeanty’s got it all and looks fantastic on paper, especially considering he’s currently got an Expected Draft Position of 11.3 according to GrindingTheMocks. Regardless of where he goes in the first round of the NFL Draft, he looks like a true workhorse in the NFL right out of the gate as a rookie.
Since 2015, here is the year one fantasy production from every RB taken in the top-15 picks of the first round:
| Name | Year | Pick | Fantasy PPG | Fantasy Finish |
| Todd Gurley | 2015 | 10 | 15.2 | RB7 |
| Melvin Gordon | 2015 | 15 | 6.6 | RB50 |
| Ezekiel Elliott | 2016 | 4 | 20.6 | RB2 |
| Leonard Fournette | 2017 | 4 | 16.3 | RB8 |
| Christian McCaffrey | 2017 | 8 | 11.8 | RB11 |
| Saquon Barkley | 2018 | 2 | 21.3 | RB2 |
| Bijan Robinson | 2023 | 8 | 12.8 | RB9 |
| Jahmyr Gibbs | 2023 | 12 | 14.4 | RB10 |
If an NFL team does decide to use let’s say a top-20 or top-15 pick on this guy, we should expect fantasy goodness right away with Jeanty a strong bet to post RB1 numbers as a rookie. In dynasty formats, he’s well worth the 1.01 rookie pick, even in SuperFlex formats.