Yeah, I also agree with this strategy. Although I'm higher up on Mike White rather than Lauletta or Faulk, I wouldn't have any problem with those two if we draft them.
The reason I'm so drawn to Mike White is from the rapid development he has shown at QB.
Because baseball was his first love, he only played one year of high school varsity football. But when he did start, he went 13-0 and won a state championship. Willie Taggart quickly snapped him up at USF and played him as a frosh/soph with bad results.
WKU QB White took unlikely path to Hilltopper stardom
When he knew his style wasn't a fit, he took a personal reflection of himself and made a decision to attend WKU because of Petrino/Brom's offense, which is also the Erhardt-Perkins system, and willing to sit behind WKU's star QB, Brandon Doughty.
It was his meteoric jump in accuracy and overall QB skills that, to me, showed he was putting in much work and effort to become a better QB.
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I actually think Jeff Brohm's leaving and Mike Sanford becoming the new head coach helped him because he proved he wasn't a system QB: just a good QB.
Now Sanford's WKU team wasn't anywhere near the quality of Brohm's, to the furor of fans on WKU's message board, but Mike persevered with no running game (or O-line) and was able to guide them to a bowl with surrounding cast he had.
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Rushing Offense | FBS Football Statistics - NCAA.com
When he played against GSU in the Cure Bowl, I was surprised that he even made it through the whole game. WKU's O-line was so bad that it made our average D-line look like the resurrection of the Doomsday D.
Yet, he kept getting up and kept trying to attack our weak points. We had good corners in Chandon Sullivan and Jerome Smith, but our LBs were slow and awful in coverage and our safeties were abysmal. What sometimes appears he's holding the ball too long, he was trying to find those spots but many of his WRs, other than TE Yelder, weren't getting open, another common theme throughout WKU's season. He was a one-man offense and was keeping them competitive in the game until the final minutes.
Western Kentucky vs. Georgia State - Game Recap - December 16, 2017 - ESPN
Yeah, he has the natural arm tools but his footwork, pocket awareness and ball security needs to get better; it's his intangibles of leadership through adversity, making teammates better (TE Deon Yelder did not even have a single catch his Jr. year and now he's an NFL prospect) and nuances for the QB position are the reasons why he's rising up the draft boards.
White shows off arm Friday at Hilltoppers' Pro Day
