“What is reasonable to expect from Ashton Jeanty as a rookie?”

This is it, isn’t it? This is the driving question as we look forward to the 2025 fantasy football season. Like all good questions, it deserves a nuanced answer. I’m only going to look at two teams as potential landing spots, the Las Vegas Raiders and the Chicago Bears. The reason for this is that it appears these two teams are the most likely to draft Jeanty based on the draft rumors thus far, with the Bears being his floor. Let’s dive in.

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Rookie Spotlight: Ashton Jeanty

What If Jeanty Goes to the Raiders?

We’ll examine Pete Carroll’s overall influence and the Raiders’ 2025 OC Chip Kelly’s influence. We’ll also examine the RBs currently on the Las Vegas roster. Once we’ve done all that, we’ll match our way out to a floor and ceiling for Jeanty.

Pete Carroll is the New HC

Let’s start by looking at Carroll’s history with the running game (“Success” is a rush that gains at least 40% of the yards needed on 1st down, 60% of the yards needed on 2nd down, and 100% of the yards on 3rd or 4th down (per Pro Football Reference):

 

Year	Success	RB	OC
2010	41.3	Marshawn Lynch	Jeremy Bates
2011	39	Lynch	Darrell Bevell
2012	47.9	Lynch	Bevell
2013	46.4	Lynch	Bevell
2014	53.5	Lynch	Bevell
2015	51.4	Thomas Rawls	Bevell
2016	43.2	Christine Michael	Bevell
2017	39.1	Mike Davis	Bevell
2018	48.7	Chris Carson	Brian Schottenheimer
2019	50.1	Carson	Schottenheimer
2020	53.5	Carson	Schottenheimer
2021	51.3	Rashaad Penny	Shane Waldron
2022	45.4	Kenneth Walker	Waldron
2023	47.1	Walker	Waldron

 

What can we glean from this? Not much, honestly. Anything at 40% or below means the loss of a job unless it’s the 1st year of an OC, but big names (Lynch, Walker) don’t automatically equate to the best years in terms of Success rate of rushes, either. It’s probably reasonable to expect that OL performance also plays a big role in this.

Notably, the Raiders finished at 40.4% with Luke Getsy and Scott Turner taking turns as OC and Alexander Mattison leading the way at RB. As we see in the above chart, finishing around 40% in the success rate of rushes means you’ll need to find a new job. Which leads us into our next aspect….

Chip Kelly is the New OC

It’s been a hot minute since we’ve seen Kelly on the NFL stage, but it’s important to note just the kind of success he had. In his four years as an OC, he ranked, on average, in terms of how his offenses ranked compared to the rest of the NFL:

 

Attempts	6.75	Never lower than 11th
Yards	7	Never lower than 14
TDs	9.75	Never lower than 21

 

To put these in terms of 2024 numbers: If we use these averages to find where they’d fall, we have 380 rushing attempts, 1700 yards rushing, and 14 rushing TDs. If we look at where they’d fall if the Raiders match Chip Kelly’s worst performance, we have 357 rushing attempts, 1500 yards rushing, and nine rushing TDs.

 

It’s important to note that NFL teams do not concentrate all of these in just one RB. Instead, NFL teams will sprinkle them among all the RBs on the roster. Much to fantasy owners’ chagrin. Which brings us to our final factor if he lands with the Raiders….

The Other RBs on the Roster

Assuming all the RBs currently on the roster are a part of the roster when the season begins, the Raiders will have Raheem Mostert, Zamir White, Sincere McCormick, and Dylan Laube in addition to Ashton Jeanty. 

 

In 2024, 32-year-old Mostert managed only 85 carries. White could only muster a paltry 65 carries in an injury-plagued season where he saw himself benched before the Raiders placed him on season-ending IR. For as rosy as fantasy players have memory-holed the awesomely-named Sincere McCormick, he only managed an amazing 39 carries between five games. Just in case this lineup is inspiring faith, and it shouldn’t be, even with the mess that the Raiders had in 2024 at RB, Laube had only one more attempt than you did, dear reader. Not exactly the 2027 Yankees lining up in competition, should Jeanty land on the Raiders.

In Pete Carroll’s head coaching career with Seattle, they brought in new RBs expected to carry the main load four times — Lynch, Carson, Penny, and Walker. This is how each fared in percentage of attempts, yards, and TDs in their first season under Carroll, not including QB attempts:

 

	Attempts	Yards	TDs
Lynch	42.8%	40.2%	46.1%
Carson	52.9%	52.7%	60%
Penny	32.1%	39.6%	37.5%
Walker	63.9%	62.6%	81.8%

 

Given the level of other RBs on the Raiders, it’s reasonable to expect that Jeanty coming to the Raiders would be closest to Walker going to the Seahawks. Possibly even better, but we’ll focus on that word — “reasonable.” We can use those compared with Chip Kelly’s worst season as an OC to get a reasonable estimate for a statistical floor for Jeanty.

That would bring Jeanty to 228 rushing attempts, 939 yards rushing, and seven rushing TDs. With Jeanty being “good enough” at pass-catching at worst, it’s reasonable to apply these same rates to the RB receiving game; we can expect another 43 receptions for 350 yards and one receiving TD. In a PPR league, that works out to 219.9 points over the course of a season. That would be good for RB19 in 2024.

Of course, all of this assumes that the 2025 Raiders will perform at Chip Kelly’s worst statistical rankings, and Jeanty will share a significant portion of the load. What if none of the stable, uninspiring other RBs on the roster amount to more than 25% of the rushing output combined? What if the Raiders perform at Kelly’s averages for rushing performance instead?

Well, the receiving aspects will stay the same for our purposes: 43 receptions, 350 yards receiving, and one receiving TD. Suddenly, Jeanty is staring down the barrel of a 285 rush, 1,275-yard, 11-TD season on the ground. Together, this would be good for 277.5 PPR points. This would have finished as the RB7 in 2024, just between Kyren Williams and Josh Jacobs.

What If Jeanty Goes to the Bears?

We can look at brand-new head coach Ben Johnson’s offenses as an OC, first-time OC Declan Doyle, the other RBs on the Bears, and some significant additions to the Bears’ OL for what will influence Jeanty’s outcome if he lands with the Bears.

New Look OL

I don’t think anyone can overstate just how much of a mess the entire Chicago Bears’ offensive unit was in 2024, and that started with the OL and, in particular, the G-C-G combo. The Bears clearly felt the same way, as they promptly traded for or signed significant upgrades at all three positions in free agency, bringing in C Drew Dahlman, and Gs Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson. Combined with talented Ts Braxton Jones and Darnell Wright, it’s reasonable to expect the Bears’ OL to, pardon the pun, take a massive step forward in 2025. Thanks in no small part to how Johnson likes to run his offense. And speaking of Johnson….

Ben Johnson is the New HC

Attempts	7.68	Never lower than 13th
Yards	7.1	Never lower than 11th
TDs	2	Never lower than 3rd

 

To put these in terms of 2024 numbers: If we use Ben Johnson’s averages to find where they’d fall, we have 375 rushing attempts, 1700 yards rushing, and 19 rushing TDs. If we look at Johnson’s worst-performing offenses, we have 350 rushing attempts, 1560 rushing yards, and 18 rushing TDs. Just like with the Raiders, we can expect the Bears to involve all the RBs they carry on the roster to some degree….

“Declan Doyle is the new OC…  but at the same time, this is Ben Johnson’s offense, through and through. Moving along!” – Lou Brunson, 2025

The Other RBs on the Roster

As of today, the Bears currently have D’Andre Swift, Roschon Johnson, Travis Homer and Ian Wheeler on the roster at RB. To date, Johnson has not exceeded 81 carries in a season. D’Andre Swift has exceeded 220 carries in each of the last two seasons. However, it’s important to note that Ben Johnson has already cut him once when they were both in Detroit. Homer has a grand total of 89 carries in his six-year career. Ian Wheeler has never been in an NFL game.

If the Bears draft Jeanty, we could see anything from Jeanty being effectively the only RB in town after the Bears jettison Swift, to Jeanty playing the David Montgomery to Swift’s Jahmyr Gibbs.

In his three years as an OC, Johnson’s lead RB averaged 244 carries and 21 receptions, with the secondary RB averaging 155 carries and 51 receptions. This means the lead RB accounts for about 61% of carries and 29% of receptions to the top two RBs.

Note: In one of those years, D’Andre Swift was the secondary RB, and he only earned 99 carries. If we see a repeat of history, then the split between the lead RB and secondary RB is likely to be bigger.

If the Bears draft Jeanty at 10th overall, it’s reasonable to assume he will slide into the lead RB role for Ben Johnson’s offense at minimum. Using Johnson’s worst-case scenarios listed above, we can expect 245 carries, 952 yards rushing, 11 rushing TDs, 21 receptions, 205 yards receiving, and one TD receiving. This equates to 208.7 PPR points and would have finished as RB17 in 2024. If Jeanty assumes more of a lead RB role like the last time Ben Johnson had D’Andre Swift and the offense operates at Johnson’s averages, then Jeanty would be skipping along to the tune of 289 carries, 1,234 yards rushing and 14 rushing TDs along with 21 receptions and 205 yards with one TD receiving, for a total of 254.9 PPR points. This would have been good enough for him to finish as RB8 in 2024.

Let’s Wrap It All Up

So what if Jeanty lands with either of the two most likely landing spots as of today, the Raiders or Bears? Weird things always happen during the NFL Draft, and I’m sure 2025 will be no exception. Will some team trade up to grab the dynamite young RB? Will the Raiders and Bears both pass because they see someone else at a great position of need? We will ultimately cross those bridges when we get to them. As of right now, we’re looking at somewhere between a middle RB2 and a middle RB1 for reasonable outcomes for Jeanty. However, there’s room for a much higher upside with the Raiders thanks to how pitiful their other RBs are.