Draft Sleeper: Markus White DL FSU, Scouting Report

The following article comes from our newest writer Mackenzie Pantoja who is still getting set up at this site, while we wait for him I’m going to post an article he wrote about his most underrated player in the draft, Florida State Defensive linemen Markus White.

Enjoy.

Florida State defensive end Markus White just seems like an impossibly underrated prospect. His incredible talent and insane production just cannot be ignored.

Markus White has an excellent set of physical tools. He is 6’4, and he has solid bulk for 4-3 defensive end at 262 pounds, and he is an amazing athlete with the speed and loose hips that would give him the versatility to play 3-4 outside linebacker at the NFL. With that bulk and a 4.58 40 yard dash, he is nothing short of a remarkable athlete, and his athleticism should show up on film in the NFL.

Markus White has outstanding strength, and enough instincts to be a very productive run stopper at the NFL level. He is quite relentless in pursuit, he stays disciplined and isn’t easily fooled by play actions, and he possesses outstanding strength that allows him to tackle any running back that enters his gap. His strength allows him to make improbable arm tackles, as well as get away with using mediocre tackling fundamentals, and it has made him a very productive run stopper at the college level.

White seems to have good intangibles. He plays with outstanding on field intensity, he is relentless in pursuit, he has an outstanding nose for the football, and he is always focused enough to have outstanding on field awareness. He also has been described as the “leader,” of the Florida State defense, motivating his teammates and making outstanding plays in crucial situations.

White has outstanding short area quickness. He gets a great jump off the ball, he has very loose hips that allows him to change directions very quickly, and he reaches full speed very quickly in pursuit. Quickness is among his greatest assets.

White, up until this season, always carried the reputation of a, “JUCO underachiever with excellent physical tools, but he had never produced statistically because of inexperience.” At this point last year, I would have agrees with this statement. In 2009, White got a mere 39 tackles and 2 sacks despite his tremendous physical tools, because of his inexperience. Yet this year, he put up outstanding numbers, being one of four defensive ends in the country to put up over 58 tackles and 8 sacks (the others being Da’Quan Bowers, Ryan Kerrigan, and Quinton Coples), only to see his stock… drop from 5th to 7th round prospect among most MEDIA scouts (the main improvement in his game was a major increase in stamina. For the first time in his career, he wasn’t exhausted by the time the first quarter was over). Frankly, this just doesn’t seem humanly possible to me. How can a player with such an improvement in his game actually fall out of favor among most of the scouts in the media? After realizing this, I kind of became skeptical of how trustworthy these media scouts are. Do these guys really watch a lot games? I, personally, have three TiVo’s and watch about 300 games a year. My scouting notes will be published later in the season. And the incredible improvement that Markus White made seems too obvious to be missed by scouts that actually watch game film.

To give everyone and idea how underrated Markus White is, let’s compare him to Robert Quinn of North Carolina, who, remember plays in the same conference as White. I’ll admit that the comparison won’t be perfect. There is a lot more to a defensive end than his 40 yard dash time and stats. I realize that. But I could compare them and say that White has outstanding strength and Quinn has none, but that is just an opinion. I will stick with only raw facts in this comparison.

Quinn is 6’4, 268 pounds, runs a 4.64 40 yard dash, and had 52 tackles and 11 sacks his last year at UNC. White is 6’4, 262 pounds, runs 4.58 40 yard dash, and had 58 tackles and 8 sacks his senior year at Florida State.

Again, I know there is much more to a defensive than a 40 yard dash and stats. But come on, they are nearly identical. Based on fact alone, does it make absolutely any sense that Quinn will be a top 5 pick and Markus White has a about a 50% chance of being drafted according to most media scouts? Absolutely none. Now, this isn’t to mean that Quinn is overrated. He is overrated for reasons unrelated to this. But I simply cannot bring myself to believe that White is considered a 7th round prospect by most NFL scouts. It doesn’t seem possible.

That being said, Markus White isn’t perfect. His main weakness is poor use of hands, and mediocre fundamentals in general. He is absolutely terrible at using his hands to shed off blocks, he possesses absolutely no pass rush moves at all, and he struggles to create pad leverage when he is engaged into offensive linemen, often playing a little too high. He also uses mediocre tackling fundamentals for an end, but he has the strength to get away with it at the college level (not so much in the NFL).

One thing that my readers are going to see me do is have a favorable opinion of players with outstanding physical tools, use very poor fundamentals in the game, but are very productive in spite of not knowing how to plays the game. Because to me, if a player can be outstandingly productive in spite of using awful fundamentals, it almost always means that that player plays with outstanding on field intensity and thus has the work ethic to improve the fundamental flaws in his game. I am not going to assume this without film, but it has never really failed me before. Markus White is no exception. I confirmed this on film, but for Markus White to be as productive as he is in spite of using poor fundamentals, he has to be intense on the field, and if he is intense on the field then he has the work ethic to fix the use of his hands and the other fundamentals flaws in his game. If he can fix his fundamentals, he will be a pro bowler.

Overall, of all 500 or so players I have scouted since 2009, Markus White is the only player I have ever seen that seems too talented to be as widely ignored as he is by the media and really be drafted somewhere that the media predicts he will be (well, I guess I thought the same about Steelers receiver Antonio Brown last year, but that’s for another article). I have a feeling that, come draft day, some brilliant team will draft him in the 3rd round or so and every media scout in the country will criticize the pick. But the general manager on that team, among a bunch of other general managers in the league, will know what kind of talent he has and the others would have drafted him just picks later (think Michael Mitchell), and the media scouts will be wrong about what they said about White. But, let’s keep it our little secret; that pick will not be as bad as everyone will think it is.

Grade: 90 (worthy of a first round selection)
Projection: 74 (could be drafted in the third round)
NFL Comparison: DeMarcus Ware, except White has more experience at end, but less at linebacker. I guarantee, if White had gone to a college that ran a 3-4, they’d be identical prospects.

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