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Here's an interesting article. Enjoy...

Yahoo! Sports Wrote:The potential steal of the NFL draft
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
1 hour, 42 minutes ago

All the big football powers of the Southeast had come to watch Pat White at Alabama’s Daphne High School. Why wouldn’t they? The kid was a natural athlete, quick and shifty, someone who would eventually get drafted three separate times by Major League Baseball.

White was an exciting quarterback but the college recruiters envisioned something different – a wide receiver, a cornerback, a tailback. He wound up committing to LSU to catch passes.

Only one major school had always seen him as a QB – West Virginia.

“I told my assistants, ‘This is a quarterback, not an athlete who plays quarterback,’” said then-West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez, whose belief in White got the playmaker to switch from LSU and sign with the Mountaineers. “You could see how he managed the game."

“We obviously ran the spread,” Rodriguez continued, “but I would’ve taken him for any system. I didn’t have any questions about him at all.”

White went on to a brilliant career, the first starting quarterback to win four bowl games.

For White’s sake, it would have been preferable if Rodriguez had wound up coaching in the NFL and not at the University of Michigan because five years later he’s dealing with the same doubts about his position.

It makes White one of the most intriguing prospects in Saturday’s NFL draft. Everyone loves a second-guessed underdog who will show up the system. Everyone loves criticizing the NFL’s Neanderthal group-think about the size and strength of what makes a player.

Here’s the thing, though. White may still be dealing with old stereotypes about prototypical size and skill sets. He may also be entering a rapidly changing league where, thanks to New England’s Bill Belichick (and his expanding influence), multi-skilled, multi-position players are more valuable than ever.

Combine that with the offense du jour – the Wildcat, which features some principles of the spread offense and has revolutionized the college game – and White may find he’s in demand not in spite of his unorthodox quarterback abilities, but because of them.

That may not make him your typical franchise quarterback, such as Georgia’s Matthew Stafford or USC’s Mark Sanchez, but he could be the steal of the draft. His selection offers a referendum on just how much the league and its thinking have changed.

“I’ve told the NFL guys he’s got the ‘it’ factor that all the great quarterbacks have,” Rodriguez said. “The bigger the stage the better he plays. And he can make all the throws. He may not be tall, but he has a high release. If someone just gives him a real chance there’s no question he’ll be [successful].”

His old coach’s support aside, White won’t be handed the keys to a franchise. His star turn with the Mountaineers, his Senior Bowl MVP (as a QB) and his head-turning performance at February’s combine, where he threw better than anyone else, can’t overcome his 6-foot, 197-pound frame or his rep as a running quarterback.

Just like back in high school, many football people project him as a receiver or running back, anything but QB.

Yet White is a “football player.” If you get lost in the particulars, you lose sight of that. Increasingly, though, the NFL is hiring people that don’t fall into that trap.

With new, New England-linked regimes in Kansas City, Denver and Cleveland, plus the original still perched up in Foxborough, the Belichickization of the NFL is well under way.

That’s 12.5 percent of the league alone and doesn’t count less direct, yet not insignificant, ties to BB in places such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit and elsewhere.

Belichick has been coaching in the NFL longer than anyone (since 1975, when he became a 23-year old assistant with the Baltimore Colts). He has won three Super Bowls, put together just the second perfect regular season in league history and found ways to field winning teams with unlikely personnel decisions.

Belichick loves “football players.” He’s into generalists, not specialists, guys who can play two or three positions and make the most of their spot on the 53-man roster. He likes defensive players he can use to block like fullbacks and wide receivers that can double as cornerbacks.

He most famously used linebacker Mike Vrabel in short yardage receiving situations, the 6-4, 260-pound defender catching eight career TD passes, including one in a Super Bowl.

It’s little surprise that Belichick brought White in to work out and has discussed the player with current WVU coach Bill Stewart. With Tom Brady, New England doesn’t need a quarterback; yet according to Stewart, the team isn’t just interested in White as a receiver. They appreciate the total package of skills, including taking snaps directly.

“Bill Belichick knows exactly what he’d do with someone like Patrick White,” Stewart told the Boston Globe. “He finds a way to put the ball in the hands of a winner."

“The Bill Belichicks, Mike Tomlins, Bill Parcellses, those guys that know winners – winners, not 750-page playbooks – find places to put them. That’s what I’ve told the NFL guys. You want him to be a slot? He’ll drive defenses nuts. He could also be a force with the Wildcat.”

Most mock drafts have White going in the third round. It says here he doesn’t last that long. There are too many Belichick disciples out there, too many coaches intrigued by the spread, who see Pat White for not just what he can do, but what he represents in terms of roster freedom and potential.

White says he’s willing to do anything a team asks him to do, but reminds that he wants to be an every down quarterback. Rodriguez, for one, thinks a smart team builds a system around him.

Rodriguez may be right, but White is too valuable to spend a season or two holding a clipboard, which is the fate for most rookie quarterbacks.

He’s a football player, after all, not just a prototype quarterback – a potential changing era in the NFL that may actually be a positive.

Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports' national columnist and author of "Resilience: Faith, Focus, Triumph" with the Miami Heat's Alonzo Mourning. The book details Mourning's rise from foster care to NBA stardom before kidney disease changed everything. Send Dan a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.

The Steelers like him as a qb also, from what I hear.

The Steelers aren't the only ones. All of the programs that win consistently are interested in White. I'll bet all these so-called draft experts on wrong on where he gets chosen...

all he's done has proved everyone wrong so far. Why stop now?

The only problem I have with this article is that they give WAY too much credit to Belichick. The Steelers were using mulit-position players succesfully longer than the Patriots. White would be a perfect fit for the Steelers. His skills are all there, he just needs to gain weight. I was surprised that in the 4 years that he was there, he didn't gain much weight.

Tiger Paul is right... Steelers want to use him in the slash role yet again. With the college game completely changing over the past 5-10 years the NFL will be forced to change its game. You see the Colts and Patriots running alot of the Texas Tech sling it all over the field in the shotgun formation more and more these past 3 seasons. The lineman are smaller and more athletic these days so the power running game will indeed become more and more of a dying breed and you'll see more and more of a speed offense. Who knows how the defenses will adjust. Maybe we'll soon see more of the WVU's 3-3 stack in pro ball. Who knows?

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the Texans pick him to team him up with Slaton again. But any guess is just that at this point. There are too many variables involved...

For scout.com subscribers, here's an Exclusive Scouting Report: WVU Pat White...

Some more news on White from the AP wire...

The Charleston Gazette Wrote:Deja vu for Pat?
White again has to prove he's a capable quarterback
By The Associated Press
April 22, 2009


Courtesy photo
WVU's Patrick White is the only quarterback to win four bowl games in college football history.

NEW YORK - Patrick White has been playing quarterback since seventh grade and prefers to keep it that way.

It's hard to blame him, really. Coming out of high school in Daphne, Ala., a bunch of Southeastern Conference schools told White that he couldn't play quarterback for them. Then he became a star at the position for West Virginia.

When his four years were up in Morgantown, the Mountaineers were 34-8 in games White started. He broke 19 school, Big East and NCAA records, and became the first quarterback to start four bowl victories in college football history.

But White did much of his damage to defenses with his legs, running for 4,480 of the 10,529 total yards he gained. Having "most prolific running quarterback in major college history" on your resume doesn't do much to convince NFL scouts you're ready to call signals on Sundays.

All that speed and elusiveness in a 6-foot-1, barely 200-pound package made White look like a prime candidate to make the switch to receiver, the way dual-threat college quarterbacks such as Washington's Antwaan Randle El and the New York Jets' Brad Smith have in the NFL.

So after all White has accomplished, the question he faced coming out of high school is still dogging him as he prepares for an NFL career: Can Patrick White play quarterback at the next level?

The doubts don't frustrate him.

"I kind of knew I was going to get it,'' he said in a recent phone interview. "Just trying to work to prove them wrong.''

He's been doing a good job. The first two rounds of the draft are Saturday at Radio City Music Hall in New York, and there's a chance White won't have to wait until Sunday, when the final five rounds are held, to hear his name called.

"I feel like I've opened eyes,'' White said. "Have I opened the right eyes? We'll see. I'm just hoping they give me a chance.''

White has two things working in his favor come draft day.

First, there are no longer questions about whether he has NFL-caliber arm strength. White finished his career with the best passing performance of his career, throwing for 332 yards in a 31-30 victory against North Carolina in the Meineke Bowl.

The left-hander followed that up with an impressive performance at the Senior Bowl and topped it off by whipping the ball around Lucas Oil Stadium at the scouting combine as well as any quarterback in Indianapolis that week.

"Early in the season, I respected his athletic ability, but he really wasn't that good a passer, in my estimation,'' said Gil Brandt, an NFL draft consultant and longtime personnel director for the Dallas Cowboys. "He improved dramatically. Against North Carolina he was really, really good. At the Senior Bowl he was really, really good.''

Still, White ran a spread offense in college, almost never dropping back, and he wasn't asked to make a lot of throws. He lacks the polish as a passer that likely first-round picks Georgia's Matthew Stafford and Southern California's Mark Sanchez display.

But plenty of quarterbacks enter the league in need of mechanical overhauls. The biggest concern scouts have about White is his size.

"He scares you in this manner: Quarterbacks now have become 6-4, 6-5, and 230 pounds, 240 pounds because they can take a hit,'' Brandt said. "He's not that strong-looking guy that you envision being able to hold up as an every-down player at quarterback.''

White only worked out as a quarterback at the combine and at his pro day in West Virginia, declining to do receiver drills.

But he hasn't taken a hardheaded stance against being used in the Slash role Kordell Stewart (QB/WR/RB) made famous with the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1990s. During White's individual workouts for New England, Philadelphia, Denver, Baltimore and Cleveland, he ran patterns and caught passes.

"I had fun with it,'' he said. "It's all football to me. I have to catch the snap out of the shotgun. It's just a little bit harder and a little longer distance.''

The other thing White has going for him is the NFL's newfound fondness for the Wildcat, an offensive formation with many similarities to the spread offense White ran in college.

The Miami Dolphins caught the league by surprise with it last season, lining up running back Ronnie Brown behind center as a single-wing quarterback.

The Wildcat spread like wildfire. White seems a perfect fit for the scheme.

"I think an intriguing thing about a guy like Pat White is that he played in that offense in college, but he can also throw the ball really well; he's a good quarterback,'' said Eric DeCosta, director of player personnel for the Baltimore Ravens. "So the drafting team is probably going to find a way to get him back there, and then the defense is not only going to have to focus on the running game of the Wildcat, but the passing game. I think he's a pretty skilled guy, and I think teams are looking to exploit that, trying to find that guy.''

Maybe a team such as the Dolphins?

"He's certainly a great athlete,'' said Miami general manager Jeff Ireland, refusing to reveal his hand. "He certainly has a lot of qualities that are intriguing to a lot of teams, and I think whoever drafts him is going to have a great player.''

White's goal is to make teams believe they are getting a great quarterback.

"You can't change every mind,'' he said. "You can only do what you can do.''

It's worked so far.

Pat White's improvement as a passer is a testament to Coach Mullen's teaching his offensive strategy to White in the one year he had him under his wing. Almost all of the improvement came last season. That kind of advertising is priceless...