Georgia Football Breakout Players for 2020: No. 7 — Zamir White

There are few debuts Georgia fans awaited more than Zamir White a year ago. Now, in 2020 he could be in store for a true breakout year.

Coming back from one knee injury is one thing. Coming back from knee surgery on both of your knees, can really take a lot of a player and not just physically. To work as hard as these athletes are required to do during rehab to only be truly healthy for a handful of months before having to have to essentially start back over. 

Zamir White has already earned the admiration of his teammates and coaches that watched him walk through that struggle. As Kirby Smart said last fall, even the defenders forced to tackle him in practice were routing for him: 

"When he gets the opportunity to come out there and gain some confidence and success, I think everybody is pulling for him. And for the defensive players, it’s not easy to pull for him because he’s not easy to tackle him. He’s a full-grown man when he’s out there running the ball."

Now, after almost two full years since his last knee injury during the spring of 2018, White should at least come close to resembling that explosive 230 pound back that scored a touchdown on 22% of his carries his senior season in high school. Think about that, almost every fourth carry was a touchdown. 

Heck, he had 7 receptions for 233 yards, that's a 33.3 yards per reception average. Truly unheard of. It's no wonder he was the consensus No. 1 back overall in 2018. 

We don't know if the "I'm going to leave you" speed will ever return, but what we do know is that he will wear down a defense. Defenders will not want to tackle "A full-grown man," as Smart calls him, come the fourth quarter. 

We also know that he's likely going to get the lion's share of the carries in 2020, or at least should. Though he came into the Georgia program drawing comparisons to big backs like Todd Gurley, to me the comparison has shifted more towards a combination of Gurley and a back like Elijah Holyfield. And that's no slight at White, Holyfield eclipsed 1,000 yards in 2018 and made SEC defenses fear him in the open field because he was bringing pain and suffering along with him. 

However, if this extended time off servers him well and he returns to Athens with that elite short-area quickness and breakaway speed, lookout. 

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