Las Vegas Raiders head coach Klint Kubiak has forgotten more about football this month than I will probably ever know. But seeing as he didn’t maintain the status quo in the Raiders’ running back room in Week 8 with Ashton Jeanty and Mike Washington Jr., the usage of the two got me thinking:
Could Jeanty just become a variant of what Deebo Samuel was in his heyday with the San Francisco 49ers?
Obviously, Jeanty and Samuel are very different players. The former is a running back by trade, and the latter is a wide receiver. But Samuel very much blurred the lines between the two positions in his prime under Kyle Shanahan, and perhaps Jeanty can do the same under Kubiak in Las Vegas.
It’s not a perfect 1:1 comparison, but the strength of both players is operating in space. For the 49ers, that meant bringing Samuel into the backfield so he could just get the ball in his hands. For Jeanty, that likely means using him more as a receiving back so he can get open before he touches it.
Let’s dive into some numbers and analyze how this could all work, why it might not, and what the similarities and differences are between the two situations.
Ashton Jeanty is a downright elite receiving weapon for Las Vegas
In Week 8, Jeanty played 25 offensive snaps for the Raiders, but he logged just two carries. That’s because Las Vegas passed the ball on 20 of those 25 snaps, and Jeanty ran 16 routes. The other plays were two quarterback sneaks, a tush push, and four pass protection reps.
So, on Sunday, Kubiak used Jeanty as a receiver 8x as often as he utilized him as a running back. That is a key piece of information.
As a rookie, Jeanty lined up outside of the backfield, meaning he was in-line, in the slot or out wide, 33 times. Already in Year 2, he has logged 40 such snaps. The intent is clearly there, but the Raiders had yet to fully dive in until the Jets game, where they almost exclusively used him as a pass-catcher.
And through one and a half seasons, it has become obvious that Jeanty is a better receiver than he is a runner, at least right now. In 2026, he has 37 catches for 376 yards and three touchdowns, but as a runner, Jeanty has recorded just 337 yards and one touchdown on 108 carries.
Las Vegas should keep doing with Jeanty what he is most successful at.
Jeanty is great in the open field when he has the ball in his hands, he runs solid routes both out of the backfield and when split out wide, and he can even haul in contested passes and get yards after the catch. His background as a slot receiver in high school has clearly shaped this skill set.
Plus, with the ability to motion Jeanty out of the backfield, the Raiders can keep defenses on their toes. And his route-running ability from everywhere opens up the field; in Week 8 alone, his underneath routes brought linebackers up, and his flat routes widened the defense.
This opened things up on the second level and in the middle of the field for Las Vegas, respectively. Not every running back has that kind of pull when they run routes because they’re not as dangerous as Jeanty is in this facet of the game.
Plus, Jeanty’s rapidly improving pass protection and blitz-pickup skills allow him to protect the quarterback, but also chip defenders and release to make himself available to Kirk Cousins. There is no reason that Jeanty should be on the sideline for a passing down.
Now, you don’t want to telegraph things and have Jeanty be exclusively a pass-catcher while Washington Jr. gets all the runs. Jeanty can still be an effective runner, and giving him carries would be pivotal in pulling off a Samuel-like plan where they muddy the waters between back and receiver.
But according to Pro Football Reference, Jeanty’s success rate as a receiver is 56.3 percent this year, compared to just 44.4 percent as a runner. That is a stark contrast, and one that needs to be addressed with a change in role, similar to the one that the Raiders made this past Sunday.
A change in role similar to the one that the 49ers made with Deebo Samuel.
What was Deebo Samuel’s role like with the 49ers, and how is it similar to what Jeanty’s could be?
In 2020, which was an injury-shortened, all-around mundane season for Samuel, he lined up in the backfield just under 2.0% of the time. But in 2021, a seismic shift occurred in San Francisco, and all of a sudden, Samuel was lining up as a running back 12.2 percent of the time.
He was a First-Team All-Pro and Pro Bowler that year.
By 2022, he was back there 13.6 percent of the time (Jeanty is lining up out of the backfield 11.1 percent of the time in 2026). Of all the rushing plays that Samuel was in on, he was the ball carrier on 23.0 percent and 17.5 percent of them, respectively.
For Jeanty, he’s being targeted on 24.6 percent of his routes run.
Although these are opposites in a way, because Samuel is being utilized as a runner and Jeanty as a receiver, it’s effectively the same thing: Samuel is a runner in receiver’s clothing roughly a quarter of the time, and Jeanty is a receiver in running back’s clothing at the same rate.
What the 49ers did was refuse to pigeonhole Samuel. He wasn’t a tremendous separator in the passing game on the outside, nor was he big enough to reliably win in the middle of the field or in contested catch scenarios. But they found a way to get him the ball so he could be successful.
San Francisco played to his strengths, and Samuel was undoubtedly one of the most dangerous weapons in the league for a few years. He could line up in the backfield and run the ball or run routes. He could motion in or out to keep defenses guessing. Samuel blurred the lines.
Jeanty can do the same.
Just as Samuel ran the ball 74 percent of the time he was lined up in the backfield, Jeanty has run routes on 81.3 percent of the passing plays he has been in on. Just as Jeanty has a higher success rate as a receiver, Samuel had a higher success rate as a runner in his prime years.
They’re mirror images, but lead to the same end.
To maximize Samuel, it took a paradigm shift, which was moving him into the backfield so he could get the ball and play to his strengths. For Jeanty, it’s the opposite; the Raiders need to move him out of the backfield more often and keep him running routes so he can play to his strengths.
Ashton Jeanty’s viability as a Deebo Samuel-like player for the Raiders
Kubiak had a front-row seat to the downfall of Samuel’s running back/wide receiver blend role, as Samuel was lined up in the backfield just 6.0 percent of the time and ran on only 11.1 percent of the 49ers’ run plays when Kubiak was the passing game coordinator in San Francisco in 2023.
But that may have been more of a product of Christian McCaffrey being fully integrated there after a mid-season trade in 2022, and not because Samuel’s niche stopped working.
It remains to be seen what Kubiak will do with Jeanty, but they clearly started leaning toward him as the receiving back and Washington Jr. as the workhorse runner in Week 8. And to that I say: lean into it even more.
Jeanty has a unique skill set, but maybe it’s just not as a runner. He still needs carries, but Jeanty is a downright lethal pass-catcher, and Kubiak needs to obscure the boundary between running back and wide receiver to maximize him and give defenses all that they can handle.
Some may say that this is a glorified way of calling Jeanty a third-down back. I wouldn’t go that far; Jeanty still needs a good number of carries. The dam will break for him in the run game. But he can be somewhat of a positionless enigma that affects the game in multiple ways, as Samuel once was.
While that may seem complicated or like a last-ditch effort to justify taking him so early, if Jeanty becomes Deebo Samuel in his prime, that would be worth the No. 6 pick.
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