When Ashton Jeanty makes his NFL debut for the Las Vegas Raiders this season, he might also be debuting a new pre-snap stance in the backfield.
Since high school, Jeanty has stood straight up with his hands at his side in the backfield before the snap, a stance that some have compared to Michael Myers, the infamous killer from the "Halloween" horror movies.
It certainly hasn't hampered him on the field. He's coming off a Heisman Trophy runner-up season for Boise State in which he rushed for 2,601 yards, the second most in a season in FBS history, trailing only Barry Sanders, who rushed for 2,628 yards for Oklahoma State in 1988.
But Chip Kelly, the Raiders' offensive coordinator, wants him to adopt a different stance in the NFL. The process started on the first day of the Raiders' recent rookie minicamp.
"You know, sometimes you have to, you know, go with the flow," Jeanty said in an interview with the "Up & Adams Show," hosted by Kay Adams.
Jeanty said Kelly asked him if he ever played basketball. "And I'm like, 'Yeah, I play basketball, you know I can dunk and all that.' He's like, 'OK, show me how you would guard me,' and he's acting like he's holding the ball."
He proceeded to demonstrate the stance with Adams and said Kelly told him, "That's exactly why you have to be down in your running back stance."
Jeanty said Kelly "won for now," but he's not totally giving up on his trademark stance.
"I'm going to try and persuade him one day. I got to earn my stripes and make some plays first, but I don't think it's going to be the end [of the stance]," he said.
Jeanty said last year he got a kick out of the social media posts that compared his pre-snap stance to Myers, and he even dressed up as the iconic movie character for an Instagram post last year. He has said that stance was all about being relaxed and comfortable.
