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Boise State has an Ashton Jeanty problem. It’s a good problem to have, but it’s a problem nonetheless. Jeanty is the Heisman favorite. Jeanty is on pace to break Barry Sanders’s single-season college football rushing record. Jeanty is banged up. Coming off Jeanty’s least efficient performance of the season, there’s reason to be concerned about the running back holding up through what will most likely be seven more games. Should Boise State rest their star?
Jeanty didn’t play badly last night. He was himself out there, bouncing off tackles before defenders could wrap their arms; shifting into holes like water slipping through rocks. He made the runs when Boise State needed them, and Boise State won the game, expanding its lead in the race for the Group of Five’s guaranteed playoff spot. But UNLV keyed in on Jeanty like no other team has so far this year, and the approach worked. Jeanty only managed 3.9 yards per carry, roughly 40% of his 9.9-yard season-long average. Jeanty’s longest run was a 16-yard burst, less than a third the length of his shortest longest run in any other game this year. Jeanty was not a decoy, but he was a distraction. He was the priority for UNLV’s defense. The result was an easier night for Maddux Madsen, and despite a lot of carries, a limited and painful night for Boise State’s Heisman candidate.
Over the course of the game, Jeanty picked up or aggravated at least one minor injury. He left the game for a moment early, appearing to twist or hyperextend his arm. He asked out for a play on Boise’s game-winning drive, with what little we can glean through the facemask indicating the man was in pain. Plenty of players play through minor injuries throughout the season. But twenty touches per game is a lot for a 5’9” guy to handle, even in the Mountain West, and with defenses figuring out how exclusively they can focus on him, Jeanty will probably need more than twenty touches per game if he actually wants to put his name alongside that of Sanders.
Jeanty, I imagine, has three personal goals right now. He wants to win the Heisman. He wants to break Sanders’s record. He wants to be selected in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft.
That NFL Draft piece is a tricky goal to forecast. Theoretically, NFL teams should be able to estimate a player’s worth with comparable accuracy whether they carry the ball 250 times or 175 times in their final college season. Because of that, we’re going to ignore the NFL Draft piece. The primary angle we can see in which Jeanty’s remaining workload affects his NFL stock is the one where Jeanty—God forbid—suffers a serious injury. Increased carries do increase the chance of that happening, but it’s hard to know what that risk is, and overall, it’s small. The other goals here are the ones on which we’ll focus.
Jeanty’s pursuit of Barry Sanders’s record is easy to forecast. Jeanty probably isn’t going to get it. He’s averaging 196.6 yards per game, but that only puts him on pace to pass Sanders by 124 yards, and that’s if Boise State plays fourteen games. In Jeanty’s last three games, he’s averaging only 177 yards per contest. Maybe this is a temporary dip, but our guess is that the attention makes Jeanty’s job harder, as we mentioned above. Maybe the bruises are adding up. Maybe teams are getting more comfortable putting nine in the box. Whatever the case, that 177-yard recent average puts him on pace to come up three yards short of Sanders’s number. Still incredible, but not quite record-setting, and sure to come with some celebration from some critics, given Sanders played only eleven games in 1980.
The Heisman? Thankfully for Jeanty, the Heisman is largely about perception, which incentivizes milestone numbers and specific games. Becoming college football’s 30th two-thousand-yard rusher since 1956? That would move the needle. Putting up big numbers against San Diego State (primetime Friday broadcast) and in the Mountain West Championship? Again, the needle would move. Carry the ball only ten times each against Wyoming and Nevada? Provided Boise State wins both those games, Heisman voters likely would not notice.
For Ashton Jeanty’s purposes, full-bodied pursuit of Sanders’s record is of course an understandable goal. But he could take some second halves off and split carries in a few games, and he’d still have a good Heisman chance. Miami will probably lose, whether that’s Cam Ward’s fault or not. Travis Hunter is struggling to keep up his obscene snap counts. No quarterback is transcendent right now. That San Diego State game is this coming Friday, and that’s one Jeanty should circle—a chance to break 200 yards again even if it takes a ton of carries. After that, though? Jeanty and Boise State can, if they want to, check the odds and adjust his usage accordingly. It’s a wild thing to say, using a betting market’s forecast of an award race to determine a running back’s workload, but it wouldn’t be an unreasonable approach. Boise State also stands to benefit if Jeanty wins the Heisman. It’s been 34 years since an active mid-major player won the award.
What about Boise State’s actual wins and losses, though?
Boise State, I imagine, has one team goal right now. Boise State wants to make the College Football Playoff and advance as far as possible once there.
Given what Boise State is and what Boise State is not, I’d personally guess Boise State needs to avoid Ohio State, Texas, Georgia, and Alabama if it wants a realistic shot at winning a playoff game. Those are not currently the four best teams in the country, but they’re the four most talented and athletic teams, the ones who can physically overpower even the best the current Group of Five has to offer. A problem for Boise State is that there’s a 70% chance, per our model’s latest simulations, that one of those four teams ends up being the 5-seed. Eliminate Alabama and the probability’s still 69% one of those teams is in that 5-seed slot.
Where this becomes an issue is that in 71% of simulations where Boise State makes the playoff, Boise State lands in either the 4-seed or the 12-seed slot. Those are the likeliest places for a team who’s already lost once and, despite being the Mountain West favorite, is likelier than not to lose once more before playoff selections are made.
There’s something like a 50% chance, then, that Boise State doesn’t have a realistic shot of winning its playoff opener. Even matchups against Miami (7% chance if Boise State makes it), Notre Dame (7%), Penn State (4%), and Oregon (9%)—whom Boise State nearly beat already—would see the Broncos as massive underdogs. An argument could be made that Boise State shouldn’t worry about trying to win playoff games once there. Boise State’s focus should simply be on making the playoff. If that means running Jeanty into the ground over the next six weeks, that’s what it means. Boise State doesn’t lose that much value if Jeanty is unavailable or limited or even simply slower come playoff time.
Obviously, we’re not advocating for an injury here, or for anything reckless. Similarly, that sixth game of the next six is the biggest one that counts. That’s the Mountain West Championship, and Boise State still needs to win it, unless some things really change elsewhere in this country. But what’s convenient about the risks of Jeanty’s Heisman and Barry Sanders pursuits is that they align fairly well with Boise State’s interests. It would be awesome if Boise State won a playoff game. It would be great for Boise State. But the chances of that happening are very, very low. They’re only barely among the top 25 teams in the country, per Movelor—our model’s rating system—this morning. Getting there, above all else, is the goal for Boise State. Focusing on that looks a lot like trying to get Jeanty 2,629 yards.
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In the aftermath of Boise State’s victory, the Broncos are now favored over the Group of Five field to earn that minimum one playoff bid. They check in this morning at 69.7% likely, leading Army (13.9%), Tulane (9.4%), and Navy (6.6%) among those we called “factors” yesterday. With UNLV leaving that group (there’s still a chance, but they need to win out and get some help), we only have 16 factors left, meaning there are only 23 teams seriously involved in the national championship picture going into today.
In the even later game, USC blew out Rutgers, and a lot is lost at USC but that win was meaningful, both for the Trojans and for the playoff race. USC’s up to 16th in Movelor now, having actually over-performed their preseason expectations in terms of on-field performance. We said this a few days ago, but people are really misremembering what USC was supposed to be. The upshot of this is that if USC can take care of business as a potential favorite at Washington and a likely favorite over Nebraska and UCLA, the Trojans could potentially enter the season finale ranked. The losses to Minnesota and Maryland are bad, but the win over LSU is even more impressive than it was at the time.
What does this mean for the playoff? Well, it helps LSU, who occupies a position where each loss might be heavily scrutinized. It probably hurts Notre Dame, who’s almost definitely in if they finish 11–1, but it could help the Irish if they drop a game elsewhere, or if they lose to USC but USC’s impressive and the game is close.
The issue for Lincoln Riley is not that this team is bad. It isn’t. The issue for Lincoln Riley is that he managed to lose two games he shouldn’t have.
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Saturday resources:
- Our Week 9 preview
- Our College Football Playoff Bracketology
- Movelor’s Week 9 spreads
- Our model’s playoff probabilities
Bark.
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