Mojo Player Spotlight: Rachaad White, RB, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

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In Week 1 of this season, Leonard Fournette ran for 127 yards on 21 carries, a healthy 6.1 yards per carry. The Buccaneers beat the Cowboys 19-3 in a prime-time slot, and things looked very promising for one of the Super Bowl favorites.

Things have turned since.

The Buccaneers have gone 4-5 since that game (and needed wins the last two weeks to even get to that point). Fournette hasn’t topped 65 rushing yards in a game since. He’s run for 335 yards on 114 carries since Week 1, a yards-per-carry average of 2.9 that is positively Carlos Hyde-esque. The offense was struggling, and Fournette was a big part of that.

Enter Rachaad White.

Maybe it was a one-off, borne of passport issues with a trip to Germany in store, but in Week 10, the Buccaneers beat the surprising Seattle Seahawks 21-16, and White was the biggest part of that offense. He started and garnered 22 carries for 105 yards (compared to 14 and 57 for Fournette). The third-round rookie White hadn’t had more than 8 carries in a game before Week 10, but now he heads into the bye off easily the biggest workload of his career.

Mojo Spotlight: Rachaad White

White was a popular sleeper pick this preseason, albeit as the theoretical pass-catching option in the Tampa Bay offense. Tom Brady has famously enjoyed a receiving back (Dion Lewis, James White and so on in his New England days), and White profiled as a strong receiver from his days at Arizona State – he had 43 receptions for 456 yards in 2021. Fournette has historically been a fine-to-above-average receiver out of the backfield, but giving him a back who can catch passes as a running mate would help ease the workload off the veteran.

It hasn’t really worked that way so far. White has only 20 receptions for 135 yards through his first 10 career games, with a 5-50 game in Week 4 and no other games with more than 3 receptions or 28 yards. With his big workload Sunday, White totaled exactly zero targets against Seattle. Meanwhile, Fournette has 43 receptions for 315 and 3 touchdowns (White hasn’t tallied a receiving score yet). So perhaps White is not offering a complete game yet. But a back who can garner 22 carries in a game, whose only real competition for touches is a near-28-year-old who has all of two 15-yard runs this season (White had two just in the second half Sunday), who should theoretically grow as a receiver as his rookie year goes on, is someone who offers upside.

Going Forward

Right now, as of this writing, White’s stock value is $5.28 on Mojo. That’s about 50 cents ahead of where it was a week ago, before his breakout and before the rumors of Fournette’s passport issues raised some White intrigue. It’s more than a dollar ahead of where he was valued around Week 3, when White had no touches in the Buccaneers’ Week 3 loss to Green Bay. But it’s also about a dollar shy of how he was valued in training camp and the offseason, when we thought he would be a potential sleeper in an offense that needed backfield help.

To recap: We had a back we thought was worth about $6.20 a share this offseason. He was a rookie who started slow … because he was a rookie. Now, he’s garnered 20-plus carries in a game and is performing better than a potentially over-the-hill veteran in his backfield. There’s the possibility of receiving work to unlock even more potential. And you can get him for a dollar cheaper than you could back when everything that we thought is happening might happen.

Pay attention to reports out of Tampa about how the Fournette/White split might shake out coming out of the bye (especially with Fournette nursing a hip injury). But there are already murmurs out of Tampa that White could hold onto the starting job going forward. And even if he doesn’t, it seems very unlikely the team goes away from White altogether after he looked so good in a very necessary neutral-site win Sunday. 

Getting a back with that sort of potential at $5.28 a share has the potential for value even if he’s a backup/No. 2 option. If he’s a starter, that share price could double without much work. A small payout feels safe, and there’s the possibility of a big one.