It’s difficult to catch Ashton Jeanty on a football field. That figures, since he has been all over the depth chart on teams he’s played for during the six years since his family returned to the United States after his father, an officer in the U.S. Navy, completed three years stationed in Italy.
When they arrived back stateside, Jeanty showed up at Frisco’s Lone Star High School as a “who’s he?” sophomore eager to play football for the Rangers. Jeanty flashed exceptional offensive ability right away in Frisco, but coaches still placed the newcomer on defense because the team’s offensive backfield was stacked with high-end college commits. His junior year, Jeanty played primarily as a receiver, and he moved to running back as a senior. At Boise State, he understudied at running back as a freshman. When he started getting more carries last year, his play turned so many heads that in 2024, he started his junior season as a long shot contender for the Heisman Trophy.
Long shot no more: Fourteen ESPN staffers this week declared the five-foot-nine, 215-pound rushing machine the favorite to claim the honor, which is awarded annually to the nation’s best college football player. That’s because Jeanty is the only running back in major college football averaging more than 200 rushing yards per game (208) and is threatening to break two records that have belonged to Hall of Famer Barry Sanders since 1988.
Jeanty has piled up 1,248 yards and 18 touchdowns—1 receiving—in six games this year. He has plowed through, spun around, and sometimes hurdled defenders to produce viral highlights. He’s on pace to accumulate 2,496 yards and 34 touchdowns through twelve games. Sanders rushed for 2,628 yards and 37 scores in ’88 over eleven games.
But Boise State’s Broncos are almost certain to play more than twelve games. They’re heavy favorites to qualify for the Mountain West Conference championship game and are currently in position to play in the twelve-team College Football Playoff as the fifth-ranked conference winner, after the four power-conference champs.
“Never did I imagine he’d be up for the Heisman,” Jeanty’s high school coach Jeff Rayburn said in a recent interview. “You knew he was capable of doing special things on the next level. But what he’s been able to do is just mind-blowing to all of us.
“Kids like him, you see the talent,” the Frisco coach continued. “I’ve been asked, ‘Hey, when do you know it?’ Yeah, I can see it. They’re different from the other kids.”
Jeanty arrived at Lone Star High when Rayburn’s backfield featured sophomore quarterback Garret Rangel and junior running back Jaden Nixon, both of whom were committed to beginning their college careers at Oklahoma State. The team’s number one receiver, senior Marvin Mims, was bound for the Oklahoma Sooners.
Nixon was also a Lone Star newcomer in 2019, having transferred from McKinney Boyd High. He asked Jeanty where he’d moved from. “When he said Italy, I thought he meant Italy, Texas,” said Nixon, who transferred to Western Michigan before this season. “He meant Italy, Italy!”
Jeanty played defense that first year in Frisco. And he played several positions—safety, inside linebacker, defensive line. “All in the same game,” Nixon recalled.
“His skill set was so strong, so fast, so explosive,” Rayburn said. “We put him all over the place. Kind of a utility man role that year.” Jeanty was named the district’s Defensive Newcomer of the Year as the Rangers reached the state semifinals of one of the most competitive levels of Texas high school football.
As a junior, in 2020, Jeanty moved to offense and succeeded Mims as Lone Star’s top receiver while also seeing significant time in the backfield. He took over as Lone Star’s primary running back during his senior year, when Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine described him as “one of the most unique weapons in the state . . . built like a RB, but runs routes and has the hands of a WR.”
In his final high school season, Jeanty put up 1,843 rushing yards, averaging 8 yards per carry, and 810 receiving yards on top of that, plus 41 total touchdowns. But Jeanty’s outstanding play that year didn’t garner attention from coaches at power-conference colleges. That’s because in today’s recruiting environment, the nation’s top college football programs lock in their recruiting-class commitments long before many of the nation’s top high school players become seniors. Jeanty’s late arrival, after spending seventh through ninth grade in Italy, kept him off the recruiting radar for big-time college football. “Especially as a running back in Texas at a big school like ours, if you’re not an early [committed] guy, the Texases, the Alabamas, the Oklahomas, they’re filled up,” Rayburn said. “I had some [college coaches] say, ‘I think your guy is better than our guy that we took, but our guy’s been committed for so long.’ ”
Rayburn said Texas Tech and TCU were among the schools that showed late interest in recruiting Jeanty. By then, though, the running back had already been courted by some of the country’s best college football programs outside of the power conferences. Jeanty committed to Boise State, a school with a long history of succeeding against power-conference opponents, such as when the Stampede upset Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl.
Jeanty waited his turn once again during his freshman year at Boise, slotted at running back behind junior George Holani (who now plays for the Seattle Seahawks). The Broncos’ season coincidentally ended with a bowl game in Frisco, against North Texas. Rayburn was in the stands that chilly night in December 2022, watching with his son, Cade. The Broncos trailed 10–6 at halftime. Then, on Boise’s first possession of the second half, Jeanty took a handoff, did a jump cut right, stiff-armed a defender, continued toward the right sideline, turned upfield, took off, and hurdled another defender before being stopped for a 34-yard gain.
“Seen that before,” Rayburn thought.
Jeanty was Boise State’s featured running back for the rest of the game. He finished with a career-high 178 yards on 28 carries in the Broncos’ 35–32 win.
As a college sophomore, he recorded six triple-digit rushing efforts in eleven games—twice going over two hundred yards. Boise hired a new coach late that season, and the change likely tempted power-conference coaches to try to lure Jeanty away through the transfer portal. But the star running back never even considered leaving. He said in a recent interview on Fox Sports: “Walking out on everything that we built, I just couldn’t see myself doing that. Money is great, money is cool, but a legacy, an impact—that lasts forever.”
Rayburn said Boise’s promotion of interim coach Spencer Danielson to the full-time position sealed Jeanty’s decision to stay in Idaho. “I think his military upbringing [was also a factor],” Rayburn added. “He’s a yes-sir, no-sir kid. He’s so loyal to his family and loyal to his team.”
Jeanty told Fox Sports that he’d looked into Sanders’s rushing record before this season. His immediate reaction, he said, was, “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do that.’” Halfway through the season, Jeanty has run for almost 100 more yards (1,248) than Sanders did through the first six games of 1988 (1,156). That includes seven touchdown runs of 50 or more yards and four scoring runs of at least 70 yards. Even more impressive, according to Boise State’s internal statistics, Jeanty has gained 911 rushing yards after contact. (The third-party sports analytics service TruMedia pegs Jeanty’s yards after contact at 841.) Either way, that’s well over half of the running back’s total yards on the ground.
Although Jeanty has pulled ahead in this year’s Heisman Trophy race, he still needs to buck two significant trends to win the award. First, running backs no longer dominate Heisman voting. The most recent winner at the position was Alabama’s Derrick Henry, in 2015. Second, a player from a non–power conference program hasn’t won since 1990, when BYU quarterback Ty Detmer, a product of San Antonio’s Southwest High, snagged the Heisman.
Nixon keeps in touch with his high school teammate, but he avoids the H-word around Jeanty. “He’s just out there playing ball, doing what he does,” Nixon said. “I just let him go ahead and rock out.”
Back in Frisco, Jeanty and Nixon’s former team is cruising. The Lone Star High Rangers are undefeated through six games and headed for a tenth consecutive playoff appearance. Rayburn also exchanges occasional texts with Jeanty.
“Nothing much, just checking in,” Rayburn said. “Before the season, I said, ‘If you go to New York for the Heisman, I’m coming with you, right?’ I was kind of just joking.
“And look where he’s at now.”
