'Built different:' Why David White Jr. is this year's WR steal

He didn't play a football game for 1,009 days. But during that stretch? David White Jr. matured into a prospect ready for anything. On a dying father, UPS shifts and seizing the moment.

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The hardest part about training for the 2024 NFL Draft has nothing to do how many iron plates David White Jr. slides onto a barbell. Or cone drills. Or wind sprints. Nothing physical whatsoever. Worse than any pain this wide receiver could ever put himself through was the ghastly sight of fellow draft hopefuls refusing to do exactly that.

Thinking back to those training sessions in Boca Raton, Fla., White looks repulsed.

Back at Western Carolina, he was a captain. It was his duty to rip into freshmen for loafing. He served as the role model. Here? “I can’t hold everybody’s hand,” says White, who admits he bit his tongue for only so long. As peers waltzed into the gym late and half-assed their way through workouts, he started to speak up.

“Why get this close and then act like you just made it?” says White, via Zoom. “Why get this close and give 60 percent? Ugh! It pisses me off! I promise you it pisses me off. I see dudes roll in late and I tell them, ‘Bro, if you’re getting drafted, you’re getting cut.’ I tell him straight up, ‘If you’re not a first- or second- rounder, you’re out the door. You’re replaceable.’”

Big schools. Small schools. All positions. Laziness does not discriminate.

He shakes his head.

“It pisses me off. I just don’t understand it. Why are you here?”

He admits a few of those prospects probably deemed him “insane,” but knows his heart is in the right place. That’s why White stressed the need to be intentional, to genuinely attack the day. David White Jr., late-round NFL prospect, honestly sounds more like Steve Prefontaine, 70s track icon, as he eloquently articulates the need for everyone in life to maximize every ounce of their potential. He doesn’t want to have friends who do the minimum in life — “Why live that way? Why just get by?” — because not pushing your body to its absolute limits sacrifices the gift within.

Says White: “I don’t like seeing people take the easy route. Let’s get it the tough way.”

That’s certainly the road White took to the NFL’s doorstep, from Division-II Valdosta State to… a harrowing 2021 back home in Jacksonville, Fla., to… those Western Carolina Catamounts of the Southern Conference. Not exactly Ohio State or LSU or Washington in what’s been universally blessed as an all-time class of wide receivers. Perhaps one percent of readers heard grumblings of this small-school wideout dusting corners during the week of East-West Shrine Game. For the other 99 percent reading, White describes his game.

More specifically, he illustrates an indomitable force of nature.

Start with deception. He’s 6 foot 2, 201 pounds and believes he moves like he’s 5-9 or 5-10. Which catches cornerbacks off-guard. Growing up, White was never big, never fast and that forced him to play with an abundance of finesse. Off the scrimmage, he learned how to avoid contact. He’s too slithery to clutch ‘n grab. By the time White grew into his body frame? “I became kind of unstoppable.”

Adds White: “I like it being a secret to new people. Because they never see it coming. Oh Lord. I used to go against DB’s who thought they were the best in the world. And in my head, I always knew they don’t even know what’s about to happen to ‘em.”

There’s his “unlimited” release package. (“The way I’m able to move, I’m really fluid. I’m like water.”)

And his route running. (“I can run the route tree blindfolded. Literally.”)

And his craftiness. He uses his eyes to trick DBs, to bait them into taking one wrong step.

And his separation. He had no problem leaving cornerbacks from power schools in his rear-view mirror during Shrine week. (“That feeling itself? It is magnificent. I won’t lie.”)

As if realizing how this all sounds to somebody who knows nothing about him, White pauses to note that none of this rhetoric is cocky bluster. He genuinely brings such confidence to the position. He feels fully equipped to combat anything an NFL defensive back throws at him.

It’s one thing for Marvin Harrison Jr. or Malik Nabers or Rome Odunze, talents worthy of Top 3 picks in most drafts, to exude such bravado. Quite another when it’s a player with a gaping hole on his resume. White didn’t even play a football game for a span of 1,009 days between Valdosta and Western Carolina. Yet, a closer examination of that exact time period reveals why White is so flush with belief and why he is the ultimate sleeper at the wide receiver position in this 2024 draft.

He’s got the NFL’s attention. White has met with 30 of the 32 teams in various settings, including five Top 30 visits and another local visit with the Jaguars. He’ll get his chance to unleash all of those skills and go full Mortal Kombat on the best cornerbacks in the sport. At which point, there’s a good chance he’ll remember the personal tipping point that made such an opportunity possible.

When he worked the 2 a.m. shift at UPS, cared for a dying father, earned a pair of B’s and threw weights around at the local gym.

This is a prospect who tip-toed the cliff of football irrelevance and did not fall. It made him stronger.

Says White: “I never like letting life beat me.”

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Venture into the bleak unknown and there’s no telling what you’ll encounter. The brink of this sport can be disgusting. Rachaad White will never forget ducking through the broken window of a home and seeing cockroaches scurry about during his JUCO survival. Yannick Ngakoue lived with ‘roaches, too. And rats and a possum and, sadly, an abusive father. Reed Blankenship pinpoints the day he was shunned by Nick Saban. Juice Scruggs hit black ice on the I-79 and flew through the driver’s side window.

So many inhabitants of this crazy NFL world can cite a specific day when hope seemed lost.

For David White Jr., down in Jacksonville, the unknown lingered all of 2021. Each day was more of a jigsaw puzzle that consisted of minimal sleep and maximum stress.

An alarm woke him up at 12:30 a.m. If he didn’t hear the jingle, no problem. The second alarm on his phone jolted him out of bed by 1 a.m. at the latest. White usually made sure he was already sleeping in his work clothes so all he’d need to do was brush his teeth, grab a Nature Valley bar, a banana and pull into the local UPS by 2 a.m. He’d work until 10 a.m. and then either redirect to Bailey’s Health and Fitness to train or hustle back home to tend to his (very) sick father.

He’d hit the field for more drills — totally solo — and then, with any time left on the shot clock, chip away at those two online classes needed to continue his football career. Whenever that day’s puzzle was complete, White crashed around 9 p.m. and refueled with three to four hours of sleep. Naps were sporadic, a luxury.

“That was by far the toughest year of life,” he says. “For real.”

After playing at Valdosta (Ga.) State in ’18 and ’19, White entered the transfer portal, COVID ravaged the sport in 2020 and the plan was to follow his D-II coaches to Western Carolina in 2021. Kerwin Bell was the head coach with son, Kade, the offensive coordinator. There was just one problem. His credits wouldn’t transfer over in full. He’d need to pass a pair of courses to gain eligibility. Kade told him he could finish up those classes on campus as a walk-on and that they’d get him on scholarship by January 2022. He hemmed. He hawed. It wasn’t until riiiight before White stayed home for those two classes that he finally told Kade the reason why: his father’s health.

David White Sr., had lung cancer and this was a late catch.

David White Jr. felt the inherent need to move in and take care of him. Banishment from the sport hurt. But as far as son was concerned, this was the only choice. This was a “blessing in disguise.” The cancer was spreading fast and he didn’t want to leave his family behind.

“He’s built different,” Bell recalls. “No matter what happens in football, he’s going to be a great human for society.”

David White Sr. & David White Jr. after Valdosta State’s D-II title in 2018. (Courtesy of White.)

Son helped Dad get in and out of bed. Son made sure he took all medicine on time and bought him whatever he needed at the store.

Watching Dad deteriorate was crushing. The strongest man he’s ever known got weaker. Only weaker. Traveling within the house was more of a migration that often required assistance. Simply walking to the sofa could take forever. “He would have to walk really slow,” says White Jr., “and sit down really lightly.” Once on the sofa, he’d hardly move. There was no grabbing the remote in one fell swoop to change the channel. As his mobility dwindled, so did his weight. Unable to eat much beyond ultra-soft foods, White Sr. lost “a ton” of weight. Pain in both his back and abdomen became debilitating.  

“People watch movies,” White Jr. explains, “but it’s always different when it’s happening right in front of you. Someone that’s really close to you.”

The regression took an emotional toll on White’s mother and three sisters — they’d break down often — so David tried to be strong. For everyone. Son did everything in his power to fight back tears because he didn’t ever want Dad thinking his assistance was overwhelming. Nor did he want Dad thinking the cancer was worsening when it was unequivocally worsening. He realized his father fed off of his energy.

If he was smiled and joked, Dad cracked a smile. Dad gained a little more hope.

“I didn’t want him to see me as if I wasn’t strong enough,” White says. “It was definitely tough, but I just never showed the emotion around him, even when it was really tough. Seeing him have so much pain getting in and out of bed, it was heartbreaking.”

Heartbreaking, but life never stops. Through the darkest days, White never fell out of love with football. He researched his own workout plans, hit the field alone, bought his own groceries and stuck to a strict nutrition plan. Playing in the NFL one day remained a daily goal, but he needed to make money. Hence, the UPS job. This was essentially a workout on top of all his other workouts, too. White wasn’t a driver, no, he stayed on-site loading and unloading cargo from 2 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Nothing was set in stone at Western Carolina.

He had zero clue what the future entailed. Part of him wondered if he’d be at UPS for a while.

“If I didn’t pass those classes,” he says, “I was cooked.

“People think they’re so talented and they’re just going to walk into the NFL. That’s not how that works. It’s really my mindset and my love for football. I knew in life there’s going to be tough roads. So I always told myself, ‘You will definitely have to weather some storms for it to be clear skies.’”

Of course, he was raised for this gut-check moment. Long before he was popping those headphones in at the local gym and dreaming of the NFL, he was an 8-year-old playing “hot ball” with friends on the west side of Jacksonville. We all played iterations of this classic. Here, one kid would chuck the ball high into the sky and whoever caught it was chased by the other 10 kids. Whoever possessed the ball was inevitably bruised, bloodied, cremated without mercy. White’s crew of friends played on the two yards between houses that weren’t divided by a fence.

Hours and hours of full-tackle pickup games built character… even if he once thought he was dying.

During one game, White was violently smashed into the side of the house and pain shot through his hip. Laying on the ground — screaming, terrified — the young boy sincerely feared he was dying right then and there. (“I thought it was over with.”)

He survived. He played on. Watching pro games in the living room, he’d tell his father that’d be him on the screen one day.

Dad did his part. Dad made sure his son was never tempted by the unsavory corners of the neighborhood. Because long before he was unloading packages at UPS with that 12:30 a.m. wakeup, White was waking up at 6 a.m. each morning from age 10 to 18 to cut lawns with his father. Everyone else in the house was still snoozing. They’d eat breakfast together, load the truck up with a lawnmower, weed-eater, a gas tank and then, in son’s words, “tackle the world, tackle Jacksonville.” Dad loved telling his boy that the early bird catches the worm, advice that stuck for life.

Ever since, White Jr. has relished working when all of his peers are sleeping.

Not that his upbringing was smooth. White Sr. fathered with an iron fist.  

“We had tough times,” White says. “He was such a disciplinarian. And when I was young, I would always be like, ‘Bro, why is this man so tough on me? Why is he so tough on everything I’m doing?’ When I was young, it didn’t really make sense. I used to think that he was always mad about something when in reality — and it’s crazy because I’m the same right now to people — he was just always trying to mold me to be as sharp as I could be as an individual. And he was trying to always get me to understand how the world works.”

He found out exactly how the world works as 2021 wore on. Toward the end of the year, White passed those exams to ensure his football career would resume the following spring semester roughly 485 miles north. That was the good news. Bad news struck one day at his mother’s house. Clarinda came home from work and started calling his name to frantically declare, “Daddy’s in the hospital! He had a heart attack!” David thought she was referencing his father when, in fact, it was actually her Dad.

Unbeknownst to the entire family, his grandfather had been struggling with heart issues for a few years. He didn’t want the family to stress. He died in the hospital two days later. The entire family was shocked.

Two months later, Dad’s health took a turn for the worse. He was admitted to the hospital and sharply regressed over the course of three weeks. Dad slept most of the day and couldn’t speak, but White Jr. will never forget White Sr. tightly squeezing his hand. He knew Dad was listening to each of his final words.

“It felt like I was in a movie,” he says. “It didn’t even seem real.”  

On Christmas Eve, sitting in his car, White Jr. saw that Mom was calling his phone and already knew what this was about.

His heart dropped. He let the phone ring four times before answering and his mother delivered the news that Dad had indeed passed. That’s when White Jr. cried… and cried… and cried for what felt like forever. All he remembers is not even caring about Christmas that year.

The holiday “turned gray.”

Losing both his father and grandfather this quickly felt “unimaginable.”

The calendar flipped to 2022 and David White Jr. repeated a few words to himself: I can’t quit now. Knifing grief was soon replaced by a realization that the man squeezing his hand inside that hospital room prepped him for everything ahead.

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Tragedy tends to slip us into a time machine. We move backward. We move forward. With one chilling rush of memories, we realize that life is fleeting. Perspective that is equal parts sentimental and haunting. This emotional tug of war declares no true winner. Only urgency — overwhelming urgency — to truly seize every day.

When David White Jr. lost his grandfather, then his father, then uprooted for Cullowhee, N.C., pop: 7,000, he thought back to Westside High School when he barely played at all as a junior due to what he cites as favoritism. That coach was fired. White played enough as a senior to warrant D-I interest. Both Western Illinois and Central Michigan said they’d offer him a scholarship, and never did. D-II Valdosta was the obvious choice and White won a national title with current Miami Dolphins tight end Jody Fortson, profiled here. That’s where he developed a close bond with Kade Bell, the assistant coach who clearly cared about him more as a person than a player.

On to Western Carolina, he was eager to use this emotional surge for good.

No longer did White feel like he was only playing for himself. He needed to succeed for all of his younger cousins and nieces and nephews looking up to him.

“They think I’m a superhero,” White says. “I never wanted to come up short. I want to make them happy and really be in a situation where I can make their lives easier, too. So at Western, I was always the hungriest guy.”

When White got to campus that January, he weighed only 175 pounds. Working out at the local gym isn’t the same as locking into a D-I lifting program. He was able to add 25 pounds to his frame and Bell believes he can easily get up to 220-225 pounds in the pros.

Immediately, White craved the discipline that hardened him as a kid. He needed someone to fill the void Dad left. That’s where both Bell and J.J. Laster, the school’s wide receivers coach, stepped in. There’s no chance White Jr. is this unapologetically confident on the cusp of the pros without these two supplying exactly what he needed at this crucial juncture in life. Both coaches looked after him “emotionally” and “mentally,” the receiver says, but never coddled him. Never stroked his ego. They showed him how to become a man. White cites both as loving husbands and fathers. They’d speak often about taking care of your family as the head of a household.

Whenever it’s time to be a father himself, White knows he’ll be ready.

“I have not seen coaches ever in my life work as hard as I’ve seen those two men work,” White says. “And it kind of blew my mind because I told ‘em one day, ‘Y’all never take a day off!’ I've never seen them take a day off. It’s crazy. They stay after hours, they have to watch film, break stuff down, teaching us everything. And man, they really gave me their all every single day. And they always told me if I trusted in them — and if I did the things that they asked, and I stayed true to the process — that I will be able to live a good life and be successful.”

Bell would call White often to talk life, talk football and each conversation further instilled his own “mamba mentality.”

Adds White: “I already had an extremely tough mindset, but Kade opened a new height to my mindset that I didn’t even know was real. I’m not going to lie, it will forever stick with me in the way that I attack things and the way I am as an individual.”

Both assistants are at Pitt now.

Kade Bell believes he coaches this way because he played for his own father in college and saw what this type of coaching did for all of his teammates. It changes lives. If anything, he believes the standard he set for White was too high because he’s always envisioned the wideout playing in the NFL for a decade.

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Year 1 was fine. Into Year 2, Bell challenged White. Western Carolina had a legit change to win and he wanted the wide receiver to be the team’s “voice” because Bell knew everybody respected him. His message was blunt: “You’ve got to change your mentality. You’ve got to become the leader of the team. You’ve got to hold people accountable.”

Words White took to heart as a captain. Before practice, he huddled up the entire team. On gameday, his voice set the tone. Most importantly, he applied such a hard-edged attitude to his own position and it molded his game.

In practice, he started winning every 50-50 ball. Dominated.

“Him becoming a leader his senior year,” Bell explains, “took his mental space to a different level. It made him become really just a dog.”

He’s a big receiver who moves like a small receiver. The Catamounts played White inside due to necessity and his freaky ability to change direction. All receivers stretching to 6 foot 2, however, should look down at puny cornerbacks as if they have no business breathing the same oxygen. Arrogance is an advantage.

White started viewing himself as the best player on the field who could not be stopped.

“And I think that’s what made him such a great NFL prospect,” Bell says. “He’s long, he’s explosive. He can get out of routes, but then you start adding the fact that he’s tough. He’s a great blocker. He does the little things right. He’s physical when he’s catching it.

“Some receivers want to be pretty. They’re prima donnas. He became that nasty, that get-it-out-the-mud type of kid. … I’ve never seen a kid really change that much, where he went from this quiet, hardworking kid to this guy who, man, you can just feel the presence when he talks. You can feel that energy around him and that competitiveness. That drive that he has, everybody fed off of it.”

The Catamounts finished 7-4, and White’s final numbers were modest: 34 receptions for 519 yards and six touchdowns. The more scouts studied his film, the more they surely realized he was open… every game. Biting his tongue, White politely notes that he could not throw the ball and run the route himself. Bell says White was “wide-ass open” — constantly — and easily should’ve posted 100+ yards in four or five games, but that the team’s sophomore quarterback was best friends with the wide receiver on the other side of the field and force-fed him the ball. White didn’t complain.

The word that comes to the coach’s mind on three different occasions this conversation? “Mature.” They’ve known each other for a half-decade now.

Highlight reels are in short supply on YouTube, but there is one telling video. Former Pro Bowl safety Corey Chavous, the brains behind “Draft Nasty,” isn’t too concerned about those so-so numbers. He watched White closely all Shrine Week and cited the receiver’s true game speed. “He’s a player who has ‘right-now acceleration’ off the ball,” Chavous explained. “No wasted steps. No false steps in terms of his movement.” That week did wonders for White’s belief and forced NFL scouts to pay attention.

Tall receivers who move like small receivers — think Houston’s Nico Collins — are in high demand, even if they’re shrouded in mystery. White’s lack of elite production in college will force teams to project. And when DBs were burnt by the wideout down in Frisco, Texas during that all-star week, they’d ask why in the hell he played at Western Carolina and not a Power 5 school.

Without an hour handy to explain, he’d simply reply that everyone’s path is different.

Very soon, David White Jr. will get the chance to introduce himself to a new team. The WR-needy Buffalo Bills are one team that has expressed serious interest.

There’s more to his life than football. Whenever he’s done with this sport, White promises he’ll go bowling every single day. It’s a passion. His best game ever is a 220. A self-described “music fiend,” he loves all genres, from his all-time favorite artist Young Thug to whichever country songs trickle onto his playlist. Right now, all he’s listening to is the rapper Yeat. At the moment, three songs are looping above all else: Bought the Earth, Told Ya, and Killin ‘em. “When I listen to Yeat, it doesn’t even feel like I’m on earth,” he says. “It feels like I’m in a place that I don’t even know.”

There’s no forgetting the darkest days from 2021. But David White Jr. isn’t trying to suppress any thoughts of his father. Initially, it was unbelievably sad to close his eyes and think back. Eventually, he reached a point where he could freely relive everything with a smile. This was his No. 1 fan and the No. 1 reason he’ll play on Sundays. Thinking about Dad now brings him nothing but joy.

Usually, White thinks of his father the minute he wakes up.

“There’s not a day that’s gone on that I haven’t thought about him,” he says.

Memories he’ll pack up and take with him to a new city soon. Over this three-day draft, there’s a good chance a few of the prospects loafing during those winter training sessions get selected ahead of White.

It won’t sit well. He’ll snarl. But he also knows the truth sets all free.

“You can’t hide,” he says. “They’re going to see the type of person you are. They’re going to see your work ethic, they're going to see your tendencies, they’re going to see all that stuff.”

His new teammates better show up on time. Whichever weight room he joins in two weeks, count on David White Jr. speaking up before anyone touches a dumbbell.

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