Ashton Jeanty Will Make You Fall in Love With Football Again
Cataclysmic booms. Schwarzenegger stiff-arms. Boise State’s star running back is the best show in sports. Just watch him go.
Ashton Jeanty takes the handoff.
[Play “Lacrimosa” over whispers, watch the universe bubble, the heavens form.]
Bodies, bodies, bodies hit the turf. Failed defenders, their face masks down, look up for long enough to watch Jeanty leave them behind. There he goes, into the wild blue yonder. There he goes, headed for six. This has happened before, and it will happen again. Inevitability is a monster truck. It roars until it scores.
Boise State’s junior running back has rocketed into the upper echelon of Heisman Trophy contenders over his first five games of the 2024 college football season. He’s done so on the strength of absurd numbers and even more absurd highlights. He’s rushed for—eyes bulge—1,031 yards and 16 touchdowns on an average of 10.9 yards per carry. He leads the Football Bowl Subdivision in each of those categories, and his stats would be even better had he not sat out the second half of two blowouts. Still, Jeanty is on pace to break Barry Sanders’s 1988 single-season rushing record of 2,628 yards. If you’re a running back with numbers that are rubbing shoulders with Oklahoma State Barry’s, then you’re in the process of doing something wild.
Jeanty is a stormy ballcarrier. Runs real thundery. Cataclysmic booms when he meets would-be tacklers. Has lava coming out of his ears and makes the stands erupt. The man’s volcanic.
So much of modern offense is about outsmarting the defense. The quarterback is king, and schematic wizardry is queen. The running back takes a back seat. Confusion is the name of the game. The goal is to get the defense turned around and find a receiver with no defender within 10 yards. This offensive evolution is understandable but can leave fans unable to grasp what happened.
Jeanty and the 4-1 Broncos do not make sports feel like homework. They have rewound the clock and taken football back to its run-the-damn-ball essence. Boise State isn’t trying to trick you. It’s up-front with its intentions. Jeanty goes beyond making the game plan sing. He turns it operatic, makes the camera shake, makes the basics beautiful.
“We’re gonna line up, we’re gonna run the ball,” Jeanty said after piling up 259 yards and four touchdowns in a 45-24 win against Washington State in September. “You’re gonna know we’re gonna run the ball, and we’re gonna keep getting yards, and we’re gonna make you quit.”
There is something romantic about the hero running back. Something magical about a player who could go the distance every time he touches the ball. Something that makes you start naming the greats: Bo Jackson. Adrian Peterson. Earl Campbell. Tony Dorsett. Something that makes you pause the television, rewind, and call your friends into the room. Something that makes you say, “Man, look at this shit.”
Jeanty has feet made of miracles. Hand him the ball, and watch him run on water. He hits the hole blazing mad, apoplectic, in a towering rage. Ferocious and fluid. No wasted motion. He bowls over defenders as if he gets personally offended that anyone would be daft enough to get in his way. He’s built like a storm shelter, like a javelina, like the all-new Ford F-150. You better hit him low and wrap up, or he’s bouncing off you like a bad check and taking it to the house.
He’s got the vision, the elusiveness, the patience, the hezzies, the bunnies, the jets. In the open field he’s skating. The trailer’s unhooked, and the truck’s a blur. Jeanty rips chunks out of the defense. He does a little jump cut in the hole and then starts dealing blows. A cartoon of a runner doling out Schwarzenegger stiff-arms. Carries so full of broken tackles you just start laughing. Carries that leave announcers saying things like, “Ashton Jeanty breaks a tackle in the backfield, because of course he does.” Carries that would elevate Chris Berman to a higher plane.
“I just kind of go into a dark mode,” Jeanty said.
[Play Carter Burwell’s “Way Out There” from Raising Arizona, skip to the 1:16 mark, yodel with your whole heart.]
What Jeanty brings is spectacle and cinema, shock and awe. Catch him booking it like H.I. McDunnough holding freshly pilfered Huggies. Like the Roadrunner speeding across the desert with Wile E. Coyote’s weaponry. Jeanty is the gas station fight in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World made manifest. When he’s through with a defense, he leaves nothing but smoldering wreckage. Broadcasts should show his games in IMAX.
Boise State has had a nice tradition at running back. Ian Johnson, Jay Ajayi, and Doug Martin were all quality backs who made magic during their time in the City of Trees. Jeanty is something different, though. He’s appointment viewing and won’t stop until he has the whole nation at attention. He apparently had multiple six-figure NIL offers from power conference schools trying to lure him away this offseason and turned them all down. This is a player of conviction, someone who finishes what he starts.
Two quads to rule them all. Quads of Megalon and of gold. Mini-fridge quads filled with hate and ambition. The burst is rare. The balance is rare. The cuts are rare. Bucking defenders like he’s Bryan Lyndon’s horse. Turns the blue turf into an oceanic playground of obscenities.
He makes you feel bad for the defense. He makes you remember what it felt like to fall in love with football in the first place. He is past, present, and future all at once. When he’s running, he’s the best show on the planet, the only thing that matters. Ashton Jeanty takes the handoff. Yeehaw.
