Quiet, productive Kevin White expects to make noise at NFL combine
Kevin White is just getting used to the attention.
The West Virginia wide receiver was a virtual unknown a year ago, coming off a 35-catch, 507-yard junior season in 2013, and not even listed as one of the Mountaineers’ 10 best returning players entering this past season. (For perspective, two other wideouts were, as were a punter and a fullback.)
Now White is being mentioned as perhaps the top wideout in the 2015 NFL draft, following an incredible senior season — 109 catches, 1,447 receiving yards and 10 touchdowns — that opened with seven consecutive 100-yard games.
White is quiet and polite, even if his on-field demeanor looks like that of an angry man. He plays hard and plays physical, and at 6-foot-3 and 210 pounds he’s bigger than nearly every cornerback he faces. That’s why some draft analysts are pegging White to land in the top 10-15 picks this coming April, perhaps even going ahead of Alabama’s Amari Cooper, the receiver who beat White out for the Biletnikoff Award.
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White has yet to invest much time looking at mock drafts and the like, preferring to absorb himself in his pre-combine training at EXOS in Phoenix, where he’s been since Jan. 5 — one week after finishing his college career at the Liberty Bowl.
“People tell me about it,” he said. “I don’t really get too involved with the mock drafts. You can get caught up in it. People tweeting at you. I try not to open those links. I try to get away from it as much as I can.”
With flowing dreadlocks, a massive frame and good speed, White is hard to escape anyone’s notice om the field. But his shocking transformation from little-known receiver to highly touted NFL prospect is a surprise only to most everyone but himself.
Don’t mistake White’s quiet personality with his burning confidence. He very much enjoyed hearing the college football-watching nation take notice of his incredible senior season.
“It was great. It was a tremendous feeling because entering this season, people didn’t really know the things I could do. I could, but they hadn’t seen it yet. As the season progressed, my name just started rising.”
It started with a nine-catch, 143-yard, one-TD game — White’s welcome-world moment — in a loss against Cooper’s Bama squad in the season opener. That prompted Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald, a player White long had tried to emulate, to give the young man quite the hat tip.
“That was amazing to see him tweet at me,” White said. “My phone was blowing up. Right after the game I knew. I just couldn’t believe it.”
White grew up in Plainfield, N.J., about 20 minutes away from the New York Jets’ facility, but moved to Pennsylvania when he was 10 years old and lived there ever since. His first choice for college coming out of high school was Pitt, where Fitzgerald was a star and the eventual No. 3 overall pick in the draft. But White realized that he was not likely to qualify academically and was forced to take the junior-college route before he could play Division-I football.
Landing at Lackawanna (Pa.) Junior College, White put together a solid but hardly eye-popping 2012 season, with 36 catches for 535 yards and six scores. White had two power-5 schools recruiting him: West Virginia and Texas Tech. That was it.
“The only other offers I got were from Hawaii, Bowling Green, a few other smaller schools,” White said.
So he chose West Virginia, a mere 330 miles away instead of two-thirds of the way across the country. White was surprised so few schools were hot on his trail.
“Definitely. I am not sure why,” he said. “If it happened differently, maybe I wouldn’t have gone to West Virginia, you never know. But it worked out for the best.”
Following his first season with the Mountaineers, the coaches challenged White to get faster. He took it upon himself to blow the coaches away in his final crack at college football. White said getting used to the system and having consistent quarterback play no doubt made a big difference, but that offseason work was the tipping point.
“I put in all the time and effort in the offseason,” he said, “so there was no doubt in my mind I was — and we were — going to do big things.”
Big indeed. White surpassed the 1,000-yard mark after only seven games, more than doubling his 2013 receiving-yards totals. But from that point on in the regular-season, he seemed to hit a wall. Three catches for 27 yards against Oklahoma State. Three for 28 against TCU, held in check by his namesake, Horned Frogs cornerback Kevin White, who is six inches shorter at 5-9 and 35 pounds lighter.
The Mountaineers’ White caught 16 passes against Texas, but in his final five games he averaged only 59.6 yards per game (after averaging 145.7 his first seven) and had no catches longer than 23 yards (after having at least one catch in each of his first seven games longer than that). he chalks it up to being the focus of every opposing defense from that point on.
“Getting double covered. Opponents bringing a lot more attention. Outside linebackers buzzing for me. I just had to get adjusted to it,” White said. “It was very frustrating because I wanted to put up the numbers, but instead of forcing the ball to me, we went elsewhere and Mario Alford took a lot of weight off our shoulders. As long as we were winning I really didn’t mind. But there was nothing I could do about the numbers there.”
Adding injury to insult, White suffered an ankle and Achilles injury in the regular-season finale against Iowa State. Even with the injury bothering him, White managed to finish his West Virginia career on a personal high note, catching seven passes for 129 yards and a touchdown, in the Mountaineers’ 45-37 loss to Texas A&M.
White accepted his invitation to the Senior Bowl in January but opted not to attend, landing on event director Phil Savage’s “naughty” list of players who failed to alert him or his staff of a worthy reason for skipping or ample time for game officials to replace his roster spot.
Asked why he stayed away from Mobile, Ala., White blamed his balky ankle.
“I couldn’t get in and out of my cuts like I wanted to,” White said. “The best thing was to just keep rehabbing and work on my 40.”
And that 40-yard dash, which he plans to run at the NFL combine this week (along with performing every other drill asked of him, he said), could be the kind of thing that cements his draft stock and caps White’s meteoric rise inside the top 10.
“I think it’s going to be the most important part in my [evaluation],” White said. “I think some people expect me to run slow. I don’t know what they think I’ll run, but it’s probably slower than what I am actually going to run.”
White and Cooper have become friends, meeting at the Biletnikoff Award event, and White says there is no personal competition between them over top wideout honors in the draft.
“He’s a real humble guy, quiet,” White said of Cooper. “But once he gets to know you, he’s a good talker — but no trash talking. Mutual respect there between us.”
After the combine, White said he’s considering going up to Brandon Marshall’s new facility, in Northbrook, Il., to work out. White had been texting with Marshall for some time but first met him face to face the Monday before the Super Bowl at EXOS, when Marshall just happened to stop by. White said Fitzgerald, Marshall and Julio Jones are the three receivers he most closely watches and tries to model his own game after.
“I love watching those guys. Dez Bryant, too,” White said. “The way they catch the ball, that’s how I try to play. Using my body, being aggressive. Not waiting for it to come to me. Getting it every time it comes my way. That the kind of [NFL receiver] I want to be.”
And that’s the kind of receiver NFL teams are clawing to try to draft.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
