Coach Pete: Jeanty 'as good as anything we’ve seen' through four games

BOISE — Ashton Jeanty is catching the attention of just about everyone involved in college football.

Former Boise State coach Chris Petersen certainly couldn’t stay away.

Petersen, now an analyst for Fox Sports’ college football coverage, was back in town this week working on a story for Saturday’s Big Noon Kickoff show on Jeanty and the impressive season the Bronco running back has had thus far.

“He is amazing, that’s why I’m over here right now,” said Petersen, who was the head coach of the Broncos from 2006-13. “Everybody’s wondering what’s going on over here on The Blue Turf, and I’m not different.”

What’s going on is perhaps unlike anything ever seen in college football. Through four games this year, Jeanty has rushed for 845 yards and 13 touchdowns. At the current pace he’s going, he will break the record set by Barry Sanders in both categories during the 1988 season.

Sanders, who played at Oklahoma State, ran for 2,628 rushing yards and 37 touchdowns in what is widely considered one of the more impressive seasons in college football history. If the Broncos play a minimum of 13 games — 12 regular seasons and a Mountain West title game — Jeanty is on pace to run for 2,746 yards and 42 touchdowns. And that’s not counting any bowl game or College Football Playoff game the Broncos might play after that.

In a program that’s seen running backs Alexander Mattison, Jeremy McNichols, Jay Ajayi and Doug Martin all drafted in the last dozen years, Jeanty may stand alone.

Just this week, The Athletic released its latest mock 2025 NFL Draft first round. Jeanty was slotted into the No. 28 spot, going to the Houston Texans.

“We’ve always had a really good running back,” Petersen said. “This may be as good as anything we’ve seen. I’m in a little bit of an awkward position, being an old coach. It’s game four, there’s a lot of season left, so you don’t want to put the cart before the horse. But what’s he’s done through these four games is something not a lot of us have seen in recent memory, and I’m talking about in college football.”

That’s high praise coming from the man who much of Boise State’s modern-day success can be traced back to. Petersen was the coach during the height of Boise State’s dominant run in the early part of this century. As head coach of the Broncos, he posted a 92-12 record, won five conference titles, had four AP Top 10 finishes and two undefeated Fiesta Bowl-winning seasons.

He remains a huge part of the Boise State program to this day, with current Bronco coach Spencer Danielson stating this week that he and Petersen talk every Sunday.

This past Sunday, Danielson said, the topic came up on how to protect Jeanty and make sure his entire time isn’t taken up by fulfilling media requests. Petersen had to deal with a similar situation with quarterback Kellen Moore, who posted a 50-3 record as a Bronco starter and finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting in 2010.

In light of their Sunday conversation, Petersen called Danielson on Monday to inform him he was flying to Boise to talk with Jeanty.

“I was like, ‘Coach Pete, you always have free range to come out here,’” said Danielson. “But I was so glad that it was him doing it. He’s a guy that, his impact still runs through this facility, this entire team and this entire community. Him being able to interview Ashton, he hasn’t had a lot of one-on-one time with Ashton prior, so getting that time with him was awesome.”

It’s not just the eye-popping stats or the powerful broken tackles that caught Petersen’s attention. Back when he was the coach of the Broncos, Petersen liked to focus his recruiting efforts on ‘OKGs,’ or ‘Our Kind of Guys.’ He wanted players who were not only dominant on the field, but members of the community who fit in well with the culture he was trying to build.

In Jeanty, who spurned opportunities to enter the transfer portal last year and remained at Boise State, he sees the epitome of an OKG.

“He’s probably the poster child for it,” Petersen said. “From everything I’ve heard from his coaches, the first thing they’ll say is, ‘this guy is such a great kid.’ It’s not, ‘oh he’s such a great running back.’ There’s a lot of people that were coming after him, not even being in the transfer portal they were still coming after him. On behalf of all the college coaches around, I just want to go hug the kid and say ‘thank you for doing this in a special, different way.’”