CINCINNATI — Jarell White always made plays. Pee-wee, middle school, high school. Offense, defense. If White was on a football field, he was involved in the action, one way or another.
“He just has a nose for the football,” said Jim Hilvert, putting an old cliche to good use. Hilvert, the current head coach at DIII Baldwin Wallace University, coached White at Cincinnati’s La Salle High School for two seasons. “He was a very physical football player, and very smart. He takes what he sees on film and the scouting report, and he just has a knack for being around the ball all the time.”
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Hilvert was at La Salle for White’s junior and senior seasons when the two helped lead the Lancers to back-to-back Division II state championships. Both title runs were marked by a handful of momentum-shifting performances and moments by White, who played running back as well as linebacker and safety.
“My first year there, we had to move guys to defense because we lost a lot from the year before. And he was one of those juniors who kept getting better,” Hilvert said. “Our defense was complicated, and he did a great job of being organized. Basically another quarterback on the field defensively.”
When Hilvert arrived at La Salle, he heard stories about White putting up 200 rushing yards on Elder in The Pit as a sophomore. It wasn’t long before he witnessed it himself, whether it was a game-changing fumble recovery against Colerain as a junior, an axis-titling blitz against Moeller as a senior, or a constant willingness to tote the rock as the team marched through the state playoffs.
“Jarell always wanted the ball in his hands, and really relished those big games and big moments,” Hilvert said. “I knew from day one of watching him that he had an opportunity to be a Division I football player.”
White has more than made good on that prediction with the Cincinnati Bearcats. The senior linebacker leads the American Athletic Conference with 49 tackles through the team’s first five games and has been arguably the best player on one of the best defenses in college football this season. It’s a worthy culmination for White, who has been a valuable contributor from the moment he arrived at UC in 2017 for Luke Fickell’s first season at the helm.
“When he’s in the game, he makes plays,” defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman said. “He’s a guy we’ve always tried to create competition with and push him to continue to get outside of his comfort zone. He’s just playing a lot more this year. We don’t want to take him off the field if we don’t have to.”
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White credits his background as a two-way player for that propensity for big plays on the defensive side of the ball, feeling that his understanding of offenses — particularly the running game — has aided his instincts as a college linebacker. But the Cincinnati native has taken his game to another level in 2020 thanks to a greater focus on his midweek preparation.
“Film study. I ain’t gonna lie, I never watched film as much as this year, unless it was required,” White said. “But it’s definitely helped me. I pick up on the little things now. It helps me play faster.”
It certainly looks that way. With Bryan Wright and Perry Young graduating after last season, White was the only known commodity returning for the Bearcats at linebacker this year. And while Joel Dublanko and Darrian Beavers have both made major strides as starters to bolster Freeman’s ridiculously talented defensive unit, White has morphed into a frenetic torpedo of a tackler alongside them. That ascendance, from reliable playmaker to All-American-caliber lynchpin, is a significant reason Cincinnati’s defense has already bumped up against its vaulted ceiling.
“I don’t know this for sure, but I think he’s probably gotten away a lot of times in his life with being a better athlete. This year, he decided to really work at the game, study it, practice at a higher level, and he’s seeing the results on the field,” Freeman said. “It’s his senior year, and Jarell is a kid who is playing with a chip on his shoulder knowing it’s his last go-round.”
It shouldn’t be a surprise, either. White has always had a knack for knowing what was coming when out on the field. And so far in 2020, he hasn’t missed.
“Just realizing it’s that time. I’m about to go to the next level, I feel, so I need to actually take it seriously. This is a job. Make sure I do the little things first and know that eventually, it will carry onto the field,” White said. “And when I feel it, I just go for it.”
White can’t help but smile now, knowing he backed the right horse.
“Yeah, I felt like I took a big risk coming here,” he said, reminiscing after a recent UC practice.
The La Salle product officially committed to Cincinnati on Jan. 3, 2017, less than a month after Fickell took the head-coaching job. White received a scholarship offer from the Tommy Tuberville-led Bearcats after his freshman year of high school but said he never viewed it as a legitimate option because none of the coaches on staff ever truly recruited him. Besides, the three-star prospect had offers from Pittsburgh, Iowa, Boston College, Purdue, Kentucky and a host of other programs, and seemed destined to be yet another in the long line of local standouts who left the Queen City to play college ball.
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Fickell instead made reclaiming the Cincinnati turf a top priority when he took the job, with he and Freeman honing in on White an immediate recruiting target.
“Coach Fickell did an unbelievable job right away of going after Jarell and obviously staking out at La Salle. He wanted to make a big splash his first year, and getting one of the best players from the city of Cincinnati and a guy from the state championship team, that meant a lot,” Hilvert said. “Jarell wanted to stay close to home. They made him feel wanted, and the plan they had in place for making UC great again, obviously they’re doing a great job.”
Within a matter of weeks, White became the first Hometown Hero for Fickell and the Bearcats, a seminal flag-planting that has since seen the likes of Josh Whyle, Malik Vann, Evan Prater, Jaheim Thomas, Mao Glynn, Cameron Junior and others follow suit.
“We came a long way. We definitely did,” White said. “I never thought it would have been this big here. I take pride in that, knowing I did something special for this city. I want to see it continue.”
White admits that aside from staying close to home, a big reason he chose Cincinnati was that he knew he could come in and play right away as the program worked to rebuild itself under Fickell. And he did, though he acknowledges that calculus has completely changed for the current crop of Hometown Heroes. White’s decision required a leap of faith just a few years ago. Now, UC is an aspiration and destination for local talent.
“It’s growing. It’s not just Cincinnati anymore either, but a regional thing. We’re becoming a powerhouse. Why not stay here?” he said. “These young guys can see it now. And that’s the point — you have to trust the process. I feel like I’m a role model for this city as far as football, and now those guys are going to be better than me.”
Make no mistake, White played a key role in that process. He took the plunge with a new staff and a program spiraling into irrelevance and has helped turn the tide fast enough to come out on the other side as a critical piece on a top-10 team nipping at the heels of the College Football Playoff establishment.
“It’s huge. A lot of people around the city know him and want to see the local guy do well,” Freeman said. “It’s important for us that those guys we recruit locally do a good job because people are watching them. That impacts the future.”
The simplest, shorthand explanation of White’s position on Cincinnati’s defense is as a linebacker. Except he’s not a traditional linebacker. He’s technically a “sniper,” the hybrid linebacker-safety position Freeman and the Bearcats developed a couple of years ago in their 4-3 base look and one that has carried over to the 3-3-5 formation. And if you refer to the sniper as a linebacker enough times, Freeman will start to squirm, maybe even push back a little.
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“Is he a linebacker, a safety, a rover? Sometimes we use him in the run game, sometimes we don’t,” Freeman said of White.
It’s a trivial detail, for the most part, but obsessing over those trivial details is one of the reasons Freeman is such a great coach. It’s also why, despite White seeing time at weakside linebacker early in his UC career and being undersized for a prototypical sniper, he has blossomed in the position this season, a versatile dynamo on an instinctive defense.
“(Playing sniper) gives him the ability to find gaps and make plays,” Freeman said. “That’s what he does best: find the football. It’s not as structured as some of the other positions on the field, and that’s where he thrives.”
He’s proven it this season, marrying that big-play persona with enhanced preparation, all of it highlighted by his textbook tackling ability. At 5-foot-10, 205-pounds, White is often smaller or slower than the running backs trying to escape the opposing backfield, or the tight ends and wide receivers coming across the middle. Yet seemingly every single one of them has been vanquished by the standout senior, dragged to the dirt in despondent heaps.
Football coaches can teach and practice proper tackling technique, and the Bearcats do. But so much of it is reflexive, innate — the confidence and swagger that allow White to play fast are also what make him such a stout and reliable tackler.
“It starts with confidence. We do tackling drills in practice and he doesn’t slow down. He knows he’s not the biggest guy on the field, but he uses his leverage really, really well,” Freeman said. “But he’s also confident because he’s not worried about getting juked or run over. When players are worried, they stop their feet and end up missing tackles because they start diving. Jarell is a guy who understands his leverage and where his eyes go, and he’s aggressive and doesn’t stop.”
As White explains it, he isn’t afraid of getting embarrassed. He’s just determined not to.
“It’s my aggressiveness. That’s my style of play,” White said. “I don’t want people just running on me. It looks bad. I don’t want to get juked or run over, so I gotta do whatever I can to make the tackle.”
As impressive as his on-field production has been this season, the prevailing narrative among the coaching staff is the maturity White has shown. Freeman and White will both freely admit they’ve had a tendency to butt heads in the past, clashes stemming from the same headstrong mentality that makes them successful. But Freeman said even that has toned way down in 2020. And though White has personal goals he’d like to achieve — 100 tackles, all-conference, All-American — he recognizes the benefits of putting the team’s needs over his own ego, and how he can still flourish within that mindset.
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“I’ve gone to UC for one-day camps over the past few years and see him there. His maturity level now from his high school days, he’s turned into a man,” Hilvert said. “He’s grown and matured as a person, and he keeps getting better. He’s come a long way.”
White intends to make the most of it. He knows how uncertain his NFL prospects are in general, particularly as an undersized linebacker, and that he could come back next year due to the blanket season of eligibility via the pandemic. But he’s far more concerned with embracing the historic season he finds himself in at the moment. He’s fully aware of the opportunity at hand and doesn’t intend to miss it.
“I worked hard for this, this is my senior year. I want to showcase what I can do,” White said. “When you come face to face with the moment, you gotta take your shot.”
(Photo: Joe Robbins / Getty Images)