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Las Vegas Raiders RB Ashton Jeanty.
Though rookie contracts are mostly set, it sometimes takes a bit to get a team and a rookie to agree on all the contract details. Luckily for the Las Vegas Raiders, they’ll have nothing to worry about.
The team announced that Jeanty has officially signed his contract. According to NFL Network’s Cameron Wolfe, Jeanty is getting a four-year contract worth over $35 million. The contract will also feature a fifth-year option that the Raiders can decide on at a later date.
Thanks to his draft status as the No. 6 pick, Jeanty is getting paid. According to Over the Cap, the nearly $9 million a year he’s getting from the Raiders makes him the 11th highest-paid running back in the NFL.
However, the most notable numbers are the guarantees. With Jeanty’s entire rookie contract being fully guaranteed, he now has the second-highest guaranteed contract for any running back behind Saquon Barkley. The Raiders have to feel confident about how good he’ll be for them to commit that type of money to a running back.
Jeanty Ready to Prove Himself
It’s interesting that Barkley is the only running back with more guaranteed money, considering that Jeanty is the highest drafted running back since he was the No. 2 pick in 2018.
It’s becoming increasingly rare for teams to use high draft picks on running backs, so Jeanty is eager to prove that the Raiders made the right decision.
“I’m ready to be a pro and show everybody why I was picked where I was picked at,” Jeanty told Tashan Reed of The Athletic. “And just get ready to play that Raider brand of football.”
The Raiders had the worst rushing offense in the NFL last season, so it won’t take much for Jeanty to improve on their run game.
Jeanty Talks Football Journey
Jeanty has had an interesting football journey. He traveled around the world as a child due to his father being a commanding officer in the Navy.
He even spent some time in Naples, Italy. When Jeanty finally came back to the States and played football, he actually had to start out at wide receiver.
“I’m honestly grateful that I was able to play receiver for a year,” Jeanty told Reed, “because it’s made me so much more well-rounded as a running back. Especially in today’s game, there’s a higher demand for running backs to be able to catch the ball and run routes.”
He eventually converted to running back, and the rest is history. Jeanty gave some more insight into his football journey.
“In high school, you really can just get the ball, run and do whatever, right?” Jeanty said. “But in college, you’ve actually got to go through a process, go through your reads, understand what the defense is giving you and be able to analyze that quickly. Another thing is the speed of the game; on each level, it gets faster and faster. So your process and your level of thinking has to improve as well.”
The transition from high school to college likely won’t come close to the transition from college to the NFL.
