Perfect Fit
December 13, 2005 03:44 PM | General
December 13, 2005
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez had no doubt from the moment he saw Pat White on film quarterbacking Daphne (Ala.) High School that White was the perfect fit for his no-huddle, spread offense.
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| QB Pat White rushed for 875 yards and averaged 8.2 yards per carry during the regular season.
Bill Amatucci photo |
Other schools like LSU, Alabama, Auburn and Tennessee weren’t so sure, first asking him if he was interested in playing wide receiver. In the end, White picked West Virginia because Rodriguez didn’t waver in his belief that he could one day be a first-rate college quarterback.
“No one was going to give me a chance at quarterback and West Virginia was going to give me that chance,” said White, who made an oral commitment to defending national champion LSU before changing his mind.
“We said quarterback the whole time and I think that helped our cause,” admitted Rodriguez. “Even on the day that he committed to LSU he called us that night and he said he thought he made a mistake. We assured him he didn’t because he didn’t sign anywhere yet.”
“(LSU) talked a little about giving me a shot at quarterback but I knew that it wasn’t going to happen,” said White of his change of plans. “I just felt that West Virginia was the place for me.”
Even though West Virginia landed White on signing day, Rodriguez still had one more obstacle to overcome before getting his prized quarterback on campus. White was also a centerfielder on his high school baseball team and the Anaheim Angels picked him in the fourth round of the Major League draft, offering him a six-figure signing bonus.
“The baseball folks have got a lot of money and it’s hard to compete with that,” Rodriguez said. “But he’s got a good head on his shoulders and he’s got a great family and they weren’t caught up in all of the ‘bling-bling’ stuff -- they were looking at the big picture.”
According to Rodriguez, when White made up his mind that he wanted to play college football there was no turning back: “Once he committed to one sport he wanted to do the best he could in that sport,” he said.
White’s reason was more to the point, “Football is just a more exciting sport,” he says.
For West Virginia football fans, Pat White has certainly done his part to keep games exciting in Morgantown this fall. At the beginning of the season, the redshirt freshman shared the quarterbacking duties with Adam Bednarik but he soon emerged as the top guy after Bednarik sprained his foot in the fourth quarter of the Louisville game with West Virginia trailing 24-7.
In an eight-minute span, White led the Mountaineers to an unlikely 17-point fourth quarter comeback, eventually winning the game in triple overtime. White kept drives alive with both his left arm and his feet, twice converting high-pressure fourth-and-long plays to keep WVU in the game.
“We got our chances and made things happen,” White shrugged. “Nobody was giving up and nobody was panicking.”
If West Virginia’s offense was searching for an identity before the Louisville game, it certainly found it afterward. And Pat White became its focal point.
The 6-foot-1-inch, 185-pounder accumulated 169 yards of total offense in a 45-13 win over Connecticut two weeks after the Louisville win, and was responsible for 211 yards of offense in a runaway 38-0 victory at Cincinnati.
White ripped off a Big East-quarterback-record 220 yards rushing against Pitt on Thanksgiving night, and finished the season with 177 yards and touchdown runs of 65 and 76 yards at South Florida.
“Who would have imagined having a quarterback with 800-some yards (875) starting just four games?” said Rodriguez. “You saw glimpses of it in the spring but he was still learning as he is right now.”
White’s fourth-quarter performances in wins against Maryland and Louisville were impressive in the eyes of his teammates, but White admits there wasn’t one watershed moment in his mind when it became obvious to him that he had earned his teammate’s trust.
“I really can’t tell you,” White said. “I don’t know if I really was working to build trust – I’m just playing for my teammates and going out there and having fun.”
‘Having fun’ is really the best way to describe White’s game. He’s not a drop-back passer in the classic sense, although he can do that, and he runs the ball just as much as he throws it. In fact, he is averaging more yards per rushing attempt (8.2) than he does per throw (7.1). For his part, White could care less how the team moves the football.
“Whatever is working, it doesn’t matter to me,” he said.
Fleet-footed Steve Slaton says White’s speed is off the charts.
“He’s a speed demon,” Slaton says. “He finds a crack and he’s gone. He sees what he needs to do, he knows what he needs to do and he does it.”
Rodriguez is a big fan of athletic quarterbacks and he puts White in the same category as Woody Dantzler, whom he coached at Clemson, and last year’s quarterback Rasheed Marshall now playing with the San Francisco 49ers.
“He’s got similar qualities to both of them,” Rodriguez said. “Pat has a little more wiggle, Woody was the stronger one and Rasheed may have been the fastest. But Pat is just a redshirt freshman so he’s still got some time ahead of him.”
It’s not a coincidence that West Virginia began piling up big offensive numbers when White started taking all of the snaps, yet he refuses to take the credit.
“Our offensive line does an excellent job,” he said. “We’ve got great coaches and when you have backs like (Owen) Schmitt and (Steve) Slaton -- they make great things happen.
“There are 11 people on the field and one person can’t do what 11 can do,” he said.
Perhaps, but one person can make a difference. Pat White is proof of that.
