Northwestern Early Signing Day Rundown: Running Backs

Northwestern will be getting its first batch of official signings today, as national early signing day has arrived. We’ll be giving you a full breakdown of the players that will be arriving at NU, starting with the offensive side of the ball (and particularly, the offensive backfield). With Mike Wright committing to Vanderbilt this morning, the 2020 class is without a quarterback as of now, so we’ll be focusing on the RBs.

The running back room is suddenly very dense in Evanston, with Ray Niro, Coco Azema and Evan Hull emerging to join Drake Anderson, Jesse Brown and Isaiah Bowser in the backfield. The seemingly strong position for the ‘Cats will be adding even more depth in the form of high three-star Cameron Porter, which, as last year’s injuries and (occasional) inefficiencies show, could be useful very quickly.

Cameron Porter

Height: 5’11”

Hometown: Cincinnati, Oh

High School: La Salle

247 composite score: .8742

National Ranking: 539

Position Ranking: 42

State Ranking: 14

Other offers: Iowa, Purdue, Minnesota, Louisville, Others

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247Sports/Hudl

Background

The 5-foot-11 back out of Cincinnati, Ohio signed his NLI on Tuesday after a tremendous career at La Salle High School, the same school that produced Jeremy Larkin and Jordan Thompson. Porter announced his commitment to Northwestern on Twitter on December 18th of 2018, after taking an official visit to Evanston on May 17th. The three-star recruit led La Salle to a 34-17 victory in the Ohio Division 2 state championship to cap off his senior season, scoring three touchdowns in the game.

Outlook

Northwestern has a crowded running back room. New OC Mike Bajakian will have Isaiah Bowser, Drake Anderson, Evan Hull and Jesse Brown on the roster as RBs, in addition to Coco Azema and Ray Niro, who received carries at the end of the season.

With that said, it’s going to be hard for Porter to get carries in his first season as a Wildcat, and he will likely be redshirted and will have the chance to compete for the starting role in future years. Still, though, the talented addition will add some needed depth to the position, and you never know when that might be useful.