Mike White, the Chosen One
QB2 Mike White celebrates a Jets touchdown against the Bengals
American football is a game of miracles, and the greatest one is the intimacy forged by highly skilled producers between its gladiators and spectators. When the ball is airborne, the collective breath of two opposing fanbases is suspended — willing a quarterback’s pass into or out of the hands of a receiver. The NFL is better than any other sports league at capturing these moments, and also the humane ones that help make up a kind of narrative fibre. Mid-game, live broadcast affords everybody at home frontline access to the quarterback’s gaze. Fifty odd thousand people or more bay for blood in the eon before the snap, attempting to rattle the quarterback’s grip on the football or the focus of the defense staring him down. On NFL Films, which captures sideline footage and also player audio, we’re privileged to process the play from all angles: the bleachers, the sidelines, the end-zone; and narrative, that there is any at all to the randomness of sports, is vindicated.
Lots of NFL fans will agree with me that one of the most satisfying plot turns is when a back-up QB, often drafted as little more than an insurance policy, emerges as the saviour the franchise didn’t realise it had on its depth chart all along. You did not draft this man with a top-five pick, after months of scouting reports and projections, and even anointings, by college football (ahem) experts, and then present him to the fanbase as a symbol of a new beginning at last. A football team can put game-changers all over the field, people you’ll see on Madden covers, but never achieve its true potential for lacking even a modest gunslinger at centre. That even a game manager will sometimes do for completing a stellar cast, someone who will simply keep the ball safe from interceptions, is itself vindication of another cliché: that football is truly a game of inches.
I think American sports fans like the idea of a hero emerging from anywhere much more than the quite European concept of a shiny acquisition justifying years of diligent attrition; unlocking, here’s one more cliché, a next level. This week, as the New York Jets boldly bench a shiny draft pick in Zack Wilson for a fifth round selection in Mike White, I have been wondering and estimating why. I reminisced upon Linsanity, as Knicks fans often do, and how unprecedented it was for a skinny Asian kid to dominate basketball for the most exciting two weeks or so Knicks fans will ever know. It felt like everybody was injured in a season that had begun with so much promise, with Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony, a free agent signing and a trade not without some sacrifice, both in and out of the rotation. Even when they were available, the output didn’t look as great as it sounded on paper. Then this Lin kid, halfway towards a stint in the minors at time of lacing (of sneakers), just lit up the Raptors in the clutch.
There was a game before that, but I remember this one the most before Lin got the best of Kobe Bryant and the Lakers at Madison Square Garden: an arena that, even today, the stars on opposing teams visit to showcase their personal brands — because the Knicks continually let them. Lin had the ball in his hands at half-court with seconds on the clock. He and a defender were locked in a staring contest. I don’t think there was much of a dribble motion. Man-defense covered all the outlet passes. Raptors fans knew it; Knicks fans knew it; the players knew it: if Lin made the bucket, we didn’t just win the game. It’d be time to take the New York Knicks seriously again, finally.
A few weeks ago Bailey Zappe, the understudy at the New England Patriots, took to the field and scored two quick touchdowns at home to the Chicago Bears. I knew exactly what Pats fans were thinking. When a back-up performs against the curve, tears up what all the film and all the data prophesied on countless talk shows, it’s what makes sports worth watching and life worth living. Back-ups, and the relative nobodies they suddenly cease to be, are the reasons we apply for jobs we’re under-qualified for; shoot our shot with people we think belong in movies; buy lottery tickets. Sometimes some wild shit happens to the five-year plan, to the weekend, and you hope you’ll ride the euphoria all the way to Oz.
When Mike White took over the quarterback role for the Jets, late in October of 2021, the season was practically over. The Gang Green, with a losing record of 1-and-5, were in territory familiar to football fans: simply playing for pride and to discern things about prospects. Who knew Joe Burrow and the youthful, 5-and-2 Cincinnati Bengals were headed for a Super Bowl run. When White took the field that afternoon, simply filling in for an injured Wilson, he didn’t attempt anything spectacular; but it didn’t feel that way in the moment. I’ve gone back to the tape, remembering (again) what the papers said, how New York cheered, at the faintest glimmer of hope. White threw for over 400 yards, the most by a Jets QB in 327 games, and completed 37 of 45 passes, the most ever by a first-time starter in the National Football League.
From that very small sample size, we know three things: that White is comfortable operating off of play action, so that he has room (but only if absolutely necessary!) to cock back from his shoulder. When he releases, the ball travels sharply about ten or sometimes fifteen and rarely twenty yards — into light traffic of two defenders max, or in 1v1 match-ups White believes he can position his receiver to win. He likes a lateral throw too. He trusts the clock and the process enough to simply secure enough yardage to hold onto the ball. Go back to the Cincinnati tape, in front of a Jets crowd that still wants its money’s worth for season tickets, and you can see White toggle reads, weigh his options, make nanosecond calls. Unlike Wilson, who instinctively scrambles when he doesn’t like the view, White changes his orientation when he doesn’t take two or three steps backwards. He keeps his feet on the ground, which is wildly unspectacular.
The Jets faithful didn’t see White enough times to know what his mindset becomes when the other side blitzes incessantly; or, for those of you that went ahead and clicked a football story, when a defense storms the pocket. He sustained an injury to the hand at the Indianapolis Colts, threw more than one interception, and the fairy tale was effectively put on ice. The Jets used this year’s draft to acquire both defensive and offensive weapons, not least individuals White can throw to, and the fanbase will be watching with bated breath when the Bears visit the Meadowlands — unfortunately, it appears, without a QB in Justin Fields who can only play spectacular. It won’t just be for the fact that a win would suit the 6-and-4 Jets quite nicely right now. White is the sort of guy nobody talked up on television, on the radio — the sort you think you gave relationship advice once, toked with on a bong some summer, at a party in an unfurnished apartment.
If he can make it, if he can squeeze that thing into the end zone Sunday, maybe any of us can.
