The Las Vegas Raiders invested the No. 6 overall pick of the 2025 NFL Draft in now-former Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty. Mike Golic Jr. argued why they shouldn’t have.
Mike Golic Jr. Debate Against Raiders’ Ashton Jeanty Pick
Jeanty posted video-game-type numbers while carrying the football for the Boise State Broncos. In taking him No. 6 overall in last weekend’s 2025 NFL Draft, Pete Carroll and his Las Vegas Raiders envisioned the 2024 Heisman Trophy runner-up eating up turf similarly in Sin City. During an appearance on ESPN’s “The Dominique Foxworth Show,” Mike Golic Jr. debated against the podcast’s namesake about the Raiders’ decision to take Jeanty.
Along with North Carolina’s Omarion Hampton (No. 23 overall, Los Angeles Chargers), Jeanty was one of two first-round tailbacks.
Jeanty joined Bijan Robinson (No. 8, Atlanta Falcons, 2023), Saquon Barkley (No. 2, New York Giants, 2018), Leonard Fournette (No. 4, Jacksonville Jaguars, 2017), Christian McCaffrey (No. 8, Carolina Panthers, 2017), Ezekiel Elliott (No. 4, Dallas Cowboys, 2016), and Todd Gurley (No. 10, St. Louis Rams, 2015) as tailbacks taken in the top 10 in the past decade.
“As someone who is used to wanting to eat cake for breakfast, cake for breakfast is fun,” Golic said. “Everyone wants to lead off with dessert because we enjoy it, because it makes us feel good, because you can dress it up a lot of different ways, and everyone has a good time. That’s why they serve cake at birthday parties … The thing is, in order to get to your cake, what you learn as an adult is, you’ve gotta eat your vegetables first.”
“And that is the thing I thought we learned about this entire running back conversation, which is, you’ve got to build up the surrounding infrastructure. You gotta have the O-line and everything else mapped up so you can go in and jam cake into the equation later on.”
Golic pointed out that the Raiders were set up to trade the pick for more capital that would help them become more well-rounded. However, Barkley’s 2,000-yard effort with the Super Bowl-champion Philadelphia Eagles last season has people excited about the running back position again.
“Running backs being back this year was cool,” Golic said. “It is a fun position to watch do well. It is knight-fighting versus a sniper’s battle. The problem is, all it did was invite more people right back to that point where it’s, ‘Alright, you’re telling me I could eat cake more often? We like cake. Good, I’m gonna have it for breakfast again.’ And we’re right back to the same problem we had at the start.”
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