Zamir White and his mom talk every night. The Raiders running back is only 15 years younger than his “best friend.”
“We talk to each other all day long, about everything,” White said.
Friday night’s conversation may get a little animated, as there is a good chance White will get his first serious action of the season and his NFL career. Starting running back Josh Jacobs is questionable for Saturday’s game with the Chiefs with oblique and hip injuries, and he also missed practice Wednesday and Thursday with a personal issue.
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White has 16 carries for 62 yards over 13 games of his rookie season, missing the last two with an ankle injury. But he is fine now. He got as many as three carries in one game, but now, one week after Raiders fans saw Jarrett Stidham take over for Derek Carr, they will get a chance to get a real look at the possible future at running back. That’s pretty good entertainment value for a disappointing 6-10 team playing out the string.
The Raiders drafted White out of Georgia in the fourth round last April, and “my mom would call me every day saying, ‘Zamir, you’re blessed, just be grateful for this and just keep on grinding,’” he said.
Most people thought White would play right away because the Raiders drafted him shortly after they passed on picking up the fifth-year option on Jacobs’ rookie deal. Well … Jacobs came to training camp in great shape, losing 10 pounds, and has simply been the best running back in the league, with 1,608 yards rushing, 395 receiving and 12 touchdowns.
GO DEEPER
Raiders' Josh Jacobs focused on enjoying potential final game with teammates
The plan was to mix in the 6-foot, 215-pound White, but Jacobs simply never allowed that to happen. Raiders coach Josh McDaniels said as much last month.
“Zamir’s time is going to come, but we got a guy that’s really running well,” McDaniels said. “And one of the unique things about Josh Jacobs is you never seen him do this (tap helmet for substitution), and I think that’s a tribute to the kid and how much he loves football, how hard he competes on a play-after-play basis.
“Zamir is ready to go. So, Josh has got to open the door and say come on in and take a couple reps off me, and he hasn’t done that a whole lot.”
Saturday’s game would be the first that Jacobs has missed all season despite running over and around defenders while dealing with foot, calf, quadriceps, finger, hip and oblique injuries. The Raiders have to decide whether to offer Jacobs a new contract or the franchise tag for one season, but Jacobs knows that White is behind him, waiting for an opportunity.
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“Z is very, very athletic,” Jacobs said last week. “He is a very raw talent. He has all the attributes that you look for in a great runner, whether it’s running or catching or even blocking. He has power, speed, everything. For me, the only thing I can help him with is compartmentalizing the playbook and doing certain things like, ‘Why are we doing this?’ or, ‘Why are you setting up the run that way?’ How to not only rely on his God-given abilities but also to use his mind.
“That’s all I can help him with because he is going to be a great back in this league. … It’s going to be interesting to see how we use him in the future.”
White came back from two knee surgeries to lead Georgia with 160 carries for 856 yards (5.35 average) and 11 touchdowns last season en route to a national title. But knee surgery was nothing compared to what he and his mom have been through.
Zamir White ran for 2,043 yards and 25 touchdowns in three seasons at Georgia. (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)Every day has been a blessing for Shanee White and her son, since doctors advised her to terminate the pregnancy at six months when he weighed only 1 pound. Her grandmother convinced Shanee to continue with the pregnancy, and Zamir was born weighing 7 pounds with a cleft lip and cleft palate.
Zamir was given two weeks to live, but he stayed in the hospital for three months before coming home.
He would have surgery for the cleft lip, and then another for the cleft palate, and then at 2 years old, another surgery to repair leaking kidneys.
And look at him now. He is chiseled. Kids started calling him “Zeus” because of his god-like speed and strength as a freshman in high school, and it stuck.
Richard Bailey, his coach at Scotland High in Laurinburg, North Carolina, didn’t know what he had until he saw White in practice that first day.
“He caught my eye that summer because everything he did, he did 100 percent,” Bailey said in a phone interview. “Every drill, every sprint. Then in practice, every handoff he took, he would go 30 or 40 yards before he turned around. This was all before he was the physically gifted player that he is now. We had an up-tempo offense, and I would tell him don’t run so far so we can get to the next play.”
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Hey, he was just practicing for the real thing …
“The first time he touched the ball in a real game, he went 55 yards for a touchdown,” Bailey said. “Most years, a freshman is not going to play tailback at Scotland, but he took the ball and ran away with it.”
There was one game that year when he had four straight first-down runs to ice a win over rival school Richmond.
“He was a shy, introverted kid and things weren’t easy, but he loved football and he never missed a workout or a practice,” Bailey said. “He would smile and make you think everything was going to be all right. I once apologized to him for giving him the ball 35 times in a game and I told him, ‘That was child abuse.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it, the ball is not very heavy.’
“I heard this later at Georgia and now in Las Vegas, and he truly doesn’t care if he carries the ball five times or 25 times,” Bailey said. “He just wants the team to win. He is the most consummate teammate, and you don’t see that a lot with star high school athletes.”
He also kept an eye on teammates and … coaches.
“We lost a game in the Eastern finals his sophomore year and — we’re the only school in the whole county and it’s kind of a ‘Friday Night Lights’ deal — and there were some people being very tough on me,” Bailey said. “People were mad that I didn’t get him the ball more. He reached out and told me that he loved me and not to listen to the outside noise. That he had my back and we would get them next year. He didn’t have to do that, but he did.
“That’s very rare in this me, me, me generation.”
Off the field, White encourages kids who are dealing with cleft lip and cleft palate, and he has worked closely with Extra Special People, which works with people with disabilities.
“I feel like it’s my call in life to reach back to those kids that are being laughed at and show them it’s OK to be different,” White said last month. “I am here for them, no matter where they are.”
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White will be here for his teammates Saturday, and fans will get to see more of his running style that he describes as “dominant” and “powerful.”
“I’m going to come at you, run at you,” he said. “I’m not scared of nothing. And I just go do what I’ve got to do.”
(Top photo: Stephen R. Sylvanie / USA Today)
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