Make it 3 players for the Notre Dame 2025 recruiting class. On Tuesday, Florida running back Justin Thurman committed to the Fighting Irish. The rising junior athlete is formerly from St. Louis and now attends Jesuit High School in Tampa.
COMMITTED!!!#ThinkBig I #Golrish☘️#ALLGOLDEVERYTHING @Hayesfawcett3 @NDFootball @Marcus_Freeman1 @coachdmc @GeradParker1 @coachdrebrown & Chad Bowden @JesuitTigers_FB pic.twitter.com/9NdDsD7IGm
— Justin Thurman (@JAT_2025) August 1, 2023
Thurman was offered in June by the Irish and attended the cookout recently. He was quickly trending toward Notre Dame and here we are with an excellent offensive player early in the process.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247Sports Composite — 4 star (.9030), #281 overall, #27 RB, #43 in FL
On3 Consensus — 4 star (89.91 rating), #259 overall, #24 RB, #37 in FL
The 247 Composite and On3 Consensus both combine 247, On3, Rivals, and ESPN rankings.
247Sports — 4 star (90 rating), #229 overall, #21 RB, #32 in FL
On3 — 3 star (89 rating), NR overall, #27 RB, #45 in FL
Rivals — 4 star (5.8 rating), NR overall, #26 RB, #45 in FL
ESPN — 3 star (79 rating), #260 overall, #25 RB, #36 in FL
Irish Sports Daily — 4 star (90 rating)
There’s an argument to be made that the recruiting world is getting worse at evaluating these younger players.
Cohort
In addition to Notre Dame, Thurman was holding top offers from Florida, Tennessee, Auburn, NC State, Kansas, Kansas State, Rutgers, Louisville, UCF, Iowa, Purdue, Indiana, Vanderbilt, and several more G5 programs.
Highlights
Thurman looks to be right around 6’0″ or maybe a tick below that and he looks pretty lean but with plenty of muscle tone already. He has long arms and looks bigger when he’s running the ball. Immediately, he is very smooth as an athlete. His style reminds me a lot of Dexter Williams. There’s a little bit of a glide to his gait and he displays pretty good open field speed.
Thurman has a nice burst through the hole and shows some good toughness, too. For an underclassman he shows an impressive amount of skill in all 3 phases of the game. There’s a lot to like here with a well-rounded player who should continue to develop more as a running back over the next couple years of high school.
Impact
Looking over the roster and the 2024 class and Notre Dame really doesn’t have a body-type like Justin Thurman. The Irish are betting on a very good but not insanely great athlete who will be able to take a couple steps up as a prep star and become one of the top players in this class. From every indication, he is a tremendous fit within the culture at Notre Dame which partly explains why the Irish moved so quickly to secure his commitment.
Welcome to the Irish family, Justin!
Excellent RB his highest rating at 25 RB?
Are you being serious? Like the variance isn’t huge when we’re talking about 16 year old kids…and this kid had a talented upperclassman ahead of him so won’t even be his team’s starter until the new season begins. He’s got great size (6’0″ 180lb) at 16 which very reasonably would translate to 6’1″ 210 at age 20…and a 10.84 100m at 16 bodes well for breakaway speed too. i’ll be more than happy to get a Dexter Williams with Braden Lenzy speed.
It’s still early in the ranking process.
Sounds like he was backing up a SR who went to Temple. Looks like he only had 19 carries, but for 8.9 ypc. He worked out at camp this summer and earned his offer. So the fact he’s even ranked a 4 star is a testament to his potential. Sounds like he is quite high on the ND RB board. But it’s pretty much all projection at this point. Still 2 more seasons for him to play.
https://www.maxpreps.com/fl/tampa/jesuit-tigers/athletes/justin-thurman/football/stats/?careerid=tsvlrve1k3b11
Yea i wonder how often a 4 star recruit basically didn’t play the previous season still having 2 years left in high school. I would think that’s relatively rare – which would be evidence for his upside and how much he’s stood out physically.
He has about 10 carries on his highlights, a few catches, 1 pass block, a few on defense, and 3-4 kick coverage plays. Probably not often that a 4 star highlight tape is 20% kick coverage. Hahaha.
Some people are even more excited about this kid’s speed, given he ran a 10.84 second 100 meter during track this spring. I saw one person confidently translate that sophomore track performance to sub-4.4 40 speed entering college. That’d be pretty good.
I like your Dex comparison in terms of burst. He leans a lot when he’s expecting contact and doesn’t seem to have elite balance yet to break more tackles, but again, it’s sophomore highlights. The more stand out highlights were the special team ones; he clearly has a feel for pursuit angles and picking through blocks on coverage and a great first step when returning.
Looks like a good recruit, but I was a bit disappointed to see that he was tackled in some of those clips. We need recruits who are never tackled down to the ground — more fullbacks