Twitter Tuesday: Zamir White, surprise team, Miami, Rutgers

Our weekly #TwitterTuesday file continues this week where readers ask Rivals.com's National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell football questions via social media. Here are five questions we chose, including Farrell’s take on where Georgia running back commit Zamir White would fit in a certain running back class.

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The 2014 running back class was pretty special. Leonard Fournette, Joe Mixon, Sony Michel, Dalvin Cook, Nick Chubb, Royce Freeman and Christian McCaffrey were all Rivals100 standouts and are clearly the future of the position in the NFL. Fournette and McCaffrey were first-round draft picks, Mixon should have been one and the same could be said about Cook and Michel. Meanwhile, Chubb and Freeman are all vying for that status in next year’s draft.

So where would Zamir White, our No. 6 player in the 2018 Rivals100, fit in? I wrote back in June that White would fall around the No. 8-13 range of the running backs I’ve scouted in high school and both Fournette and Mixon were ahead of him. So he’d be just outside the national top 10 if he were in the 2014 class. Of course we still have his senior year and all-star evaluation to go through, so he could rise or fall based on that.

White is a special talent heading into his senior year and is up there with some impressive company for now. He will be a fun one to track moving forward.

It depends on how you define "out of nowhere." I mean, would you consider a team like Auburn as an "out of nowhere" team if the Tigers win the SEC? I wouldn't. When I think of "out of nowhere," I think about a team like Colorado last year, pushing for a conference title a season after finishing with a losing record.

So, with the parameters set, give me the Texas Longhorns. It’s a bit unfair to choose Texas since it is such a massive football program, but they finished 5-7 last season and they could push for eight or even nine wins this season under new head coach Tom Herman. The media projected the Horns at No. 4 in the Big 12 behind Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Kansas State, but I think they can finish as high as third. The only losses I see on the schedule are to USC, Kansas State, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. An 8-4 record likely won’t push for a Big 12 title and is only a three-game improvement, but say they pull an upset or two? Imagine what would happen in Austin if Herman goes 10-2.

Here's are a few more "out of nowhere" candidates: Oregon under new head coach Willie Taggart, Notre Dame with the potential to turn things around with some emerging young players and UCLA with Josh Rosen and a lot of talent. And watch out for Missouri if Drew Lock takes the next step and the defense improves in a weak SEC East.

Yes to both. Patrick Surtain is a quiet kid and doesn’t give away a lot of information while Justin Fields tends to like every program he visits equally, but I could see both ending up at Florida State. There are some that think the ‘Noles are now the team to beat over Georgia and the rest for Fields and you can’t argue with the ‘Noles ability to develop first-round quarterbacks in recent years. As for Surtain, many still feel LSU is the team to beat, but don’t count out Florida State, especially if they have a better season than the Tigers. Jimbo Fisher is an elite recruiter and he has an aggressive staff, so it would be foolish to say the Seminoles don’t have a chance to land both.

I don’t think Miami finishes in the top three nationally but the Hurricanes' class will land in that Nos. 5-10 range overall with running back Lorenzo Lingard remaining as their top recruit. Miami has a 3.89 average star rating, which would have landed them fourth last year and would have finished first in 2016, but I worry that the Hurricanes could lose a couple commitments down the stretch and perhaps dip into the 3.7 range. Even if that happens, a class ranked that high with such a great star rating would be a terrific start to building a national title contender for the ‘Canes.

Rutgers is currently ranked outside the national top 50 of the 2018 Team Recruiting Rankings with 16 commitments and a 2.75 average star ranking.

Here are reasonable goals for the Scarlet Knights' 2018 class: finish in the national top 50, finish with an average star rating in the 2.7 range and land a couple of in-state difference-makers.

Rutgers is apparently trending up for the two Don Bosco four-stars, Marcellus Earlington and Tyler Friday, and those two would be huge for the program. Former Rutgers quarterback Mike Teel is now the head man at Bosco and that won’t hurt the Scarlet Knights' efforts with top players there. If Rutgers can land a couple of guys like that, it will gain some momentum in state.

Of course a lot will depend on how the season goes. It has to go better than last year’s disaster or recruiting could take a bit of a nose dive.