FanHouse Pat White

Cut-N-Go is Fantasy Football FanHouse's weekday roundup of the NFL news with fantasy football impact.

When Chad Pennington went down Sunday with a season-ending shoulder injury, an injury that may end his NFL career as well, the Miami Dolphins felt they had to scramble a bit.

Backup quarterback Chad Henne will step up and take the reigns, but the Dolphins felt that Pat White wasn't ready to be the backup just yet. To remedy this issue Miami made a trade for Tyler Thigpen, who will come in and be Henne's backup. Armando Salguero of the Miami Herald feels that this move may make Pat White obsolete.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but a quarterback by any other name might break an NFL rule. The Eagles signed Michael Vick with the intention of using him creatively, at various times throughout their games. The Dolphins drafted Pat White with similar (read: "WILDCAT!") intentions. But the NFL's rules regarding weekly roster construction could create some issues for both teams and both QBs.

The league allows each team to have 45 active players each week. If no more than two of those players are quarterbacks, the team may designate a 46th player as its emergency third quarterback. If that player enters the game prior to the fourth quarter, then the first two quarterbacks on the roster are prohibited from returning to the game at any position at any time. So if the Eagles designate Vick as their third QB, they can't use him until the fourth quarter without losing Donovan McNabb and Kevin Kolb for the rest of the day.

My question is: who decides what a "bona fide quarterback" is? And the answer, apparently, is the NFL.

There's no use pretending that a preseason Monday night can match the excitement of the NFL regular season's start to the week. We shouldn't even try to ramp up the excitement, to be honest.

In fact, I'll propose that Hank Williams Jr. and his "Are You Ready for Some Football?!" be replaced by Billy Ray Cyrus crooning "Hey, What Else Are You Watching?" for these practice contests. At least then we're not trying to kid ourselves.

But preseason football is better than no football, by a large margin, and at least this year's first Monday night features a pair of interesting matchups.

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The Dolphins selected Pat White in the second round of the April draft, and immediately, the league's best Wildcat team got better. But in the weeks following the pick, general manager Jeff Ireland hinted that White, a former quarterback at West Virginia, could challenge for the gig in Miami.

Whether wishful thinking or strategic PR spin, now, a week into training camp, the depth chart at quarterback is pretty much set. The Miami Herald's Armando Salguero writes that not only is White penciled in for the backup-to-the-backup gig, but Chad Henne isn't close to unseating Chad Pennington.

With Fantasy Football season ready to kick in high gear, FanHouse is here to preview each and every team -- one per day until we've done them all.

Meet The ...
Team who invented the Wildcat formation! Cue all sorts of zeal from the dramatic broadcasters. Of course, the formation has actually been around for decades, we just hadn't seen a ton of usage in the NFL until the Dolphins seemed to perfect it -- peaking with Ronnie Brown's ridiculous game against the Patriots.

The Dolphins have a careful quarterback, two solid runners, a good, young receiving corps, and have added a great all-around athlete via draft. It might be tough to predict who is going to consistency amass yardage, but we know one thing: They are going to be fun to watch.

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Quarterback Pat White was a second-round pick by the Miami Dolphins in April's NFL Draft. But he wasn't done being drafted. To White's surprise, he was selected in the 48th round of last week's baseball amateur draft by the New York Yankees.

White hasn't played baseball since high school, but he was pretty good back then -- good enough to get drafted in the fourth round of the 2004 MLB draft by Anaheim. He turned down the Angels and went on to have a stellar college career at West Virginia, presumably leaving baseball behind for good. But the Yankees like him enough as an athlete that they took a low-risk chance.

When the Dolphins drafted Pat White in the second round six weeks ago, everybody thought it was a deft move. Miami reintroduced the Wildcat to the NFL after nearly a 50-year hiatus, went from a one-win outfit to AFC East champs in a year, and instead of using this offseason to move to a more traditional offense, they've decided to play to their strengths, even if it's not conventional. And that means more Wildcat, and now with players who better fit the scheme.

But shortly after selecting White, the Dolphins announced that he was more than a trick-play specialist, he'd get a shot to win the quarterback job next season. The team drafted Chad Henne in Round 2 a year ago, and they seemed happy with his progress, so I didn't take the White comments seriously. That said, if he's most valuable under center, then it makes sense to put him there.

Who moved to the head of the NFL class during the draft? Find out with FanHouse's team-by-team 2009 Draft Grades.

For the fourth straight year, the Miami Dolphins used a second-round pick on a quarterback, selecting West Virginia's Pat White with the 44th overall pick. White, a record-setting player in college, joined John Beck (recently released) and Chad Henne as recent selections, to go along with the trade that brought Daunte Culpepper to Miami prior to the 2006 season.

While there is still some debate as to what type of future White will have in the NFL, the Dolphins view him as a quarterback, while one scout recently told Omar Kelly of the Sun Sentinel that Miami is trying to "revolutionize pro football by bringing the spread to the NFL."

Heading into the 2009 season, we know this much about the Miami Dolphins quarterback situation: Chad Pennington is going to be the starter, and for good reason. After 2009? Well, that's anybody's guess. Miami seems to be quite high on 2008 second-round pick Chad Henne, which played a role in the front office's decision to not offer Pennington a long-term contract extension after he helped guide the Dolphins to an AFC East title.

On Saturday, the Dolphins raised a few eyebrows when they used the 44th overall pick on West Virginia quarterback Pat White ... the third straight year they've selected a quarterback in the second round.

We've already given a single post to each of the seemingly most relevant fantasy football impact players from the NFL Draft -- we say seemingly because bust-hood is always a possibility in this business -- but those are by no means the only players who might matter in this coming season. With that in mind, here are the rest of the guys who's impact will be felt:

LeSean McCoy, RB, Eagles (Round 2): If you end up with Brian Westbrook, you absolutely must have McCoy. The shifty stud from Pittsburgh is exactly the type of back Westbrook is, which means he can thrive in this offense.