Auburn football: The 5 best three-star recruits of the Gus Malzahn era

A part of Malzahn’s first recruiting class as head coach of the Tigers, Peyton Barber was heavily overshadowed by his high school teammate and consensus five-star recruit Carl Lawson.

Despite rushing for over 1,700 yards and 22 TDs as a senior at Milton high school, Barber failed to rise up the recruiting rankings. Despite garnering some offers from major programs like Tennessee and UCLA and Clemson, Barber was ranked as the No. 42 player in the state of Georgia and the No. 482 prospect in the class of 2013.

And at the start of Barber’s Auburn career, it didn’t seem like he would make much of an impact. The 5-foot-11, 225-pound RB only managed to get 10 total carries as a redshirt freshman in 2014 and going into the 2015 season, the Tigers had a trio of former high-profile recruits in Jovon Robinson, Kerryon Johnson and Roc Thomas who were all supposed to overtake Barber on the depth chart.

However, Barber was named the starting tailback and turned that into 1,017 rushing yards and 13 TDs. Most people expected for Barber to return as a RS junior in 2016 but he made a surprise decision to leave early for the NFL and has enjoyed a solid four-year NFL career thus far.