By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN —
There was a blog in the Ft. Lauderdale (Fla.) Sun-Sentinel by the Miami Dolphins beat writer Mike Bernadino that ended this way:
“However things turn out, you still have to give [Pat] White credit for being such a professional. What’s more, you find yourself rooting for him, don’t you?”
Has anyone ever summed up Pat White more succinctly, more directly on the money?
Too often while at West Virginia the world was blinded by his dazzling skills. These were skills that translated into spectacular performances on the amateur level but that to date have yet to develop to the point where he can take them to the next level.
A controversial second-round selection by the Dolphins to run what became to be known as their “WildPat” package, White’s first was spectacularly unspectacular. He was a quarterback who did not complete a pass, a runner who gained but 2.4 yards per carry.
And it ended in horror, being brought down on a helmet-to-helmet tackle by the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Ike Taylor in the season’s final game, being carted from the field on a stretcher and spending time in a hospital with a head injury.
Some guys get their bell rung but White got hit so hard by the Steelers Ike Taylor that you expected him to come out of it with his bell looking like the Liberty Bell.
Through it all, however, there were no cries to get rid of White, who never rose above a third-string quarterback and who is a fight for his professional life as we write, battling for a similar spot on the Dolphins.
The reason they and their fans were willing to put up with White goes back to Bernadino’s description of his as both professional and a person you tend to root for because he is absent of ego, friendly beyond any expectations and means good in everything he does.
White spent not a minute sulking about his freshman flop, looking upon it, perhaps, like a redshirt season. Instead he did what he does best, analyzed the problem and attacked it.
As if he needed a reminder, that hit the head convinced him that at the 190 pounds he brought with him from West Virginia he was far too small to play the game of football at its highest level and that he did not really have the strength to compete.
The result is that since he was drafted he has put on 18 pounds of pure muscle, the last nine pounds of it coming over the off-season.
"This guy has really gotten himself bigger, stronger," Dolphins coach Tony Sparano said to his media as the team went through drills this past week. "You can see it in the
way he's throwing the ball and the way he's carrying himself."
White’s added strength has given him the ability to get more zip on his passes, to squeeze them into tight holes before defenders react, to throw further downfield.
But it is more the process than the results that has won over nearly everyone who watched White strive to become a National Football League quarterback, a goal that many never thought he should have been given the chance for.
His size and athleticism seemed to stamp him receiver/kick returner, but that huge heart of his kept pumping out quarterback blood.
And so it was that White put the one-track that his mind follows squarely upon his ultimate goal. He would work to become the best quarterback he could become.
His off-season was spent with his nose in the playbook and the rest of his body, when not pumping weights, in the film room studying himself and trying to detect areas he needed to improve.
It was an every day, on-going thing, so much so that the White legend in Miami now includes the Dolphins having to kick him out of the film room back in February so the Super Bowl teams that were in town then could get their time in there.
That is how dedicated White was to his mission.
"Hopefully, as I age and get older, it starts to slow down a lot more to where it's pretty much slow motion for me," White told the Sun-Sentinel. "I'm just trying to focus on the little things I have to get done, make myself better and we'll see where it goes from there."
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
