I had a chance to watch Ashton White last night. To be honest, I had never heard of him before yesterday when Christian wrote that he was camping at ND.
Here are my thoughts on him:
First of all, I tend to look at what particular coaches offer a kid. I'm not a huge cohort guy, meaning that every kid FSU offers isn't a guy that I assume is a great player or can play at ND. I do, however, put a lot of value on certain coaches. For example, if Bud Foster thinks a Mid-Atlantic kid can play DB for him, I take notice. This kid was once a VT commit and still, I believe, has a standing offer from VT. That says something to me. Chris Ash, the new DC at Ohio State, has produced some under the radar DB's in the last. He has offered this kid. Those two offers made me take notice, especially the offer from Virginia Tech.
Now, as to what I think about White. First of all, I like his size. He's probably about 5-11, which is enough length to play corner for sure. He's about 175-180 right now but is built strong and has a frame to get to 190+. One of the first things I saw was that he is a strong player and a willing tackler. That alone makes me like this kid as a prospect. If he can't stick at corner for whatever reason, he has the length, potential girth and ability/willingness to tackle to play safety. I love position versatility, as you all know.
He's a pretty good athlete. He has quick feet and good top end speed. He timed at a 4.2 in the shuttle, which is good. It's not blazing quick, but it is quick and it shows up on film. He does a great job of planting and driving downhill with tremendous quickness and speed. There is little wasted motion in this movement. Again, this is more of a safety type of ability here as opposed to a cornerback. As a corner he showed good quickness in his pedal and good instincts. He reads routes well and does a nice job finding the ball in the air, at least on the clips I saw. He does a real nice job mirroring on deep routes. At times he doesn't look like he hasn't the cleanest hip turn, but it's not something that will necessarily keep him from being a corner. It just keeps him from being an elite guy when it comes to opening and running. He does show good game speed (I have no clue what his timed speeds are), which allows him to recover in the few instances where a WR did get a step on him on a vertical route.
Overall I really like this kid. To me he's a 4 star football player. He's versatile, he has toughness, he's from a tough region (in regards to playing quality opponents) and he is reportedly an outstanding student. If he shows up well at camp and the ND coaches decide to offer him I'd be perfectly happy.
This is a really, really deep year at cornerback, nationally. ND needs to take advantage and bring in as many as possible. Guys like Crawford, Coleman, Ykili Ross and now White have great versatility. That means some can play on offense (Crawford, Ross, Coleman), some could play safety (White, Crawford, Ross) and all of course have a chance to be good corners. So if you got Crawford, Coleman, White and one more player (Ross, John Reid, Mook Reynolds, etc) you wouldn't necessarily be loading up with 4 pure corners. That's a plus.
My two cents.
