Why everyone loves Mike White, the Jets quarterback and ultimate family man

Mike White’s heart raced and his mind wandered. He couldn’t think straight. His legs went numb.

Oh my god. What am I going to do?

The reaction was atypical for White. It doesn’t faze him when thousands of Jets fans chant the quarterback’s name at MetLife Stadium, which has happened a few times. He’s not scared when 300-pound defensive linemen dive at him, trying to kill him. He stands strong in the pocket and delivers, like he did on fourth down late in Sunday’s close loss to the Vikings, delivering an impressive pass just moments after taking a shot to the ribs.

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“No matter what’s going on,” running back Zonovan Knight said, “it seems like he’s calm.”

Well, not always.

It was 2020, and Mallory, White’s wife, was throwing up, again. She did a lot of that during her pregnancy, about seven to 10 times per day. This time, she turned to him and said: “You better hope there’s twins in there, because I’m not doing this again.”

White laughed it off. Some days when he hears Joe Flacco, his fellow Jets quarterback and close friend, telling stories about his five kids, White imagines a life with a big family like that. He has just one younger sister — whom he “loves to death,” he said — but always wondered what it would’ve been like to have more siblings. One at a time, though.

At Mallory’s first ultrasound, the doctor kept pushing the transducer around her belly.

“I’m like, there’s only one in there, right?” Mallory said. “They move over a little bit and then they say: ‘No, you’re having twins.’”

I’m sorry, what?

White went pale.

“I’m not even kidding, I know it sounds like a movie, but my legs got weak,” White told The Athletic. “I’m like: Oh my god, there’s two!”

It was at the peak of the pandemic, so White wasn’t allowed to stay in the room. He was told to leave and wait in the car, for 30 long minutes, plenty of time for the mind to race. So he called his parents and his inner thoughts became spoken.

That’s two cars, at the same time! That’s two colleges, at the same time! If it’s two girls, that’s two weddings!

“I’m just going down a dark, dark path,” White said, laughing about it now. “Like, how am I going to afford this?”

Eventually, White pulled himself out of it. See, White has always envisioned a life in two parts: Mike White the quarterback, and Mike White the father. It has lived up to the hype. When Millie and Maddox were born last year, it changed his perspective.

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“He loves being a dad,” Mallory said. “When he found out I was pregnant, I think he could have jumped out of his skin. He’s wanted kids for years. This was definitely one of the best things that’s ever happened to him.”

Last year, after a knee injury forced Zach Wilson to the sideline for four games, White became the object of Jets fans’ fascination following his sterling starting debut against the Bengals in Week 7. White was so good (37-for-45, 405 yards, three touchdowns) in beating Cincinnati, his jersey was sent to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. That’s when he became “Mike Effing White.”

Wilson returned to the field after three subsequent Jets losses (two with White as starter, one helmed by Flacco), but fan interest in White never diminished. If fans recognize him in public, they usually ask for photos. In the offseason, White was on the phone with Mallory when a fan shouted “Mike Effing White! You’re the GOAT!” from across the mall. After a recent game, Mallory and White were out to dinner. Nearby, a group of Jets fans raised their glasses to his name, not realizing he was a table over.

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When White and his wife envisioned his NFL career, they never saw this coming. But none of it seems to bother him. Ask anyone in the Jets locker room and they’ll tell you: White is the same person now as the starting quarterback as he was earlier this season when he was third-string. He goes out of his way to spend time with his teammates at the facility — playing games, talking sports, cracking jokes — and the chemistry he shares with them is palpable. “He’s got something special about him,” wide receiver Garrett Wilson said Sunday.

He took over as starter again this season, in Week 12, after Wilson’s continual struggles led to a benching. White was stellar against the Bears in a 31-10 win, throwing for 315 yards and three touchdowns. In Week 13, White nearly led the Jets to a come-from-behind win, on the road, against the 10-2 Vikings. White has thrown for more than 300 yards in three of his five career starts dating to last year, and he’ll start again Sunday against the Bills, a crucial game in the 7-5 Jets’ playoff push. He has a chance to show Robert Saleh that he deserves to be the starting quarterback for the rest of the season, despite the coach’s stated goal of giving the job back to Wilson at some point.

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But White isn’t thinking that far ahead. He never does.

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His kids don’t care who is starting at quarterback for the Jets.

“No matter what happened at work, good, bad or indifferent, it does not matter to them,” White said. “They’re looking at you, they just want to see you, they want to play with you. It makes it easier to separate. Especially if you had a bad day, you can’t harp on it because you gotta go home and they immediately take your mind off everything.”

If you want to understand how White has managed to stay true to himself, even in the face of unimaginable fame and popularity, start there.

“I always knew I wanted to be a dad,” White said. “I just knew it’s what I wanted to be.”

White tries not to check social media during the season, but he’s still on his phone a lot. Mallory estimates he’s in at least 10 active group chats. There’s one with Jets quarterbacks, another with tight ends Tyler Conklin and C.J. Uzomah. He texts with wide receiver Braxton Berrios a lot, too, along with a few Jets offensive linemen and other teammates. White still keeps in touch with friends from every stop along his journey, dating all the way back to his baseball teammates when he was 5 years old. In the offseason, someone from the Jets is “always calling him, always FaceTiming him late at night, early in the morning,” Mallory said. “All the time.”

He still has friendships with teammates from South Florida, and Western Kentucky, and the Cowboys. Mallory can’t keep track anymore.

“He’s got so many friends,” she said, laughing.

White makes an effort to get to know all of his teammates. Most days, he can be spotted playing cornhole with them in the locker room. Sometimes they’ll play dominoes, cards, or just hang out and talk about college football. “I just genuinely enjoy that part,” he said. Last week, running back Ty Johnson handed him a T-shirt with Johnson’s likeness on it, and White wore it to his weekly news conference.

#Jets QB Mike White meeting media … in a Ty Johnson t-shirt. Can see why guys love this dude 😂 pic.twitter.com/s2vWNcIP7a

— Connor Hughes (@Connor_J_Hughes) December 1, 2022

He wore a Conklin shirt on the team plane headed for Minnesota, while a handful of teammates had their own “Mike F’n White” shirts to flash to the camera. NFL Network recently handed out sheets of paper around the locker room for players to vote for the annual Top 100 players list, and multiple defensive players scribbled in White’s name, even though he’d only played in one game to that point.

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And on Sunday, White walked into U.S. Bank Stadium alongside Berrios, Connor McGovern and Dan Feeney, all of them wearing matching jerseys from the Disney hockey movie “The Mighty Ducks.” White wore a jersey with the name of Charlie Conway, the Ducks’ captain in the movie. After the game, White bemoaned the group’s struggles to form a “flying V” formation, like in the movie.

“It’s cool to see all the guys just love him so much,” Mallory said. “He really is such a people person, and to know him is to love him. I don’t know anybody that doesn’t like Mike. He’s the most popular person in the room, no matter what room he walks in.”

It’s been like that since she met him in 2013. She was a cheerleader at USF, he was a freshman quarterback. They met while visiting Tallahassee during White’s bye week and started officially dating a couple of years later when he’d transferred to Western Kentucky. They envisioned a life together in Texas after he was drafted in the fifth round by the Cowboys in 2018. They got married in 2019 before training camp.

Mallory figured they’d get to spend at least four years there since he signed a four-year contract, but the Cowboys had other plans. That summer, White was competing with Cooper Rush to back up Dak Prescott. The loser would get cut. The battle consumed him, and White brought that stress home with him. His play suffered as a result, and he was cut after training camp. The Cowboys didn’t want to bring him back on the practice squad, either. He considered a detour to the XFL to prove himself. Then the Jets called, desperate for quarterback help when Sam Darnold was knocked out for a few weeks due to mononucleosis, and convinced him to join their practice squad.

The start of his Jets tenure tested his patience. He was cut and re-signed by the team four times in 2020, and then the coaching staff that signed him (led by Adam Gase) was fired and replaced by Saleh.

In 2021, White was in another training camp battle, this time with James Morgan (a 2020 fourth-round pick) to back up Wilson, whom the Jets had just drafted at No. 2. This battle felt different, though.

Especially after what happened in August.

Mallory’s water broke in Tampa Bay on Aug. 16, the day before the Jets were flying to Green Bay for a week of joint practices with the Packers. White was still in New Jersey. The Jets got White a flight to Tampa, he landed at 11:30 p.m., got to the hospital at midnight and then the twins were born at 12:54 a.m., premature.

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The hospital was still following COVID-19 protocols, meaning only one person could be in the hospital with Mallory. So, White was alone.

“He was doing it all,” Mallory said.

She’d had a C-section, so White spent his time bouncing between checking in on her as she recovered from surgery to checking on Millie and Maddox in the NICU. Maddox made it down to Mallory’s room around 10 in the morning, while Millie remained in the NICU. Every now and then, White would sit on a “little couch” in the hospital, he said, trying to find brief moments of shut-eye. He had to catch a flight at 3 p.m. to get to Green Bay.

“He was really upset to leave,” Mallory said.

But he made it to the 3 p.m. flight, had a layover in Chicago and then finally arrived at the team hotel in Green Bay around 1:30 a.m. — and practice was at 7.

Somehow, he powered through it.

“I was a zombie, and it was probably the best practice I had all year,” White said.

But how?

“You’re not thinking, you’re just doing,” he said.

That feeling stuck with him.

When White walked off the field at MetLife Stadium on Nov. 14, 2021, there was only one thing on his mind. Not the four interceptions he just threw in a 45-17 loss to the Bills. He’d have plenty of time to think about that.

“He was just the same person he always is, saying: ‘I just want to go home and see the kids. I can’t wait to give them a hug,'” Mallory said. “So that’s exactly what he did.”

To White, there is no better feeling than when he walks through the door of their two-bedroom apartment to Maddox and Millie screaming “Dada,” running and jumping into his arms, a warm embrace. After that loss to the Bills, White played with his kids until they went to bed, then he and Mallory picked up pizza and went to see McGovern and his wife. You wouldn’t have known White just had a bad game, that he had lost his starting job. It was just a regular Sunday night to him, pizza with his pals.

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“It’s one of his talents, that he can turn it off,” McGovern said. “It’s impressive.”

That comes easy. Maddox and Millie don’t care how he performed on Sunday. When he looks at them, he forgets all of that. “He loves waking them up,” Mallory said. “He loves seeing their face in the morning.”

Having kids is “definitely one of the best things that’s ever happened” to Mike White, says his wife, Mallory. (Courtesy of Mallory White)

Flacco knows that feeling. He had his first child when he was 27, in his fifth year with the Ravens. It changed everything for “Joe Cool,” too, and he sees the impact it’s had on White.

“When you become a dad it definitely gets your priorities in order and it gives you a little bit of confidence,” Flacco said. “It grounds you. It refocuses you. For some reason, there becomes an inner peace. … It just gives you a bigger picture of what we’re here to do. It puts football in perspective. For whatever reason, it just allows you to remember that we’re just playing a game … and not put so much pressure on yourself on the business and the job.”

White feels that every day he gets home after practice, around 5:30 p.m., just as the kids are finishing up dinner. He takes them off his wife’s hands for the night, a respite after she’s been caring for them all day.

“My wife is holding it down at home. She’s unbelievable,” he said. “I don’t know how she does it. I go home and I’m like: OK, I gotta give her a break.”

White likes taking Maddox and Millie for walks around their apartment complex — not far from the Jets facility — or to a nearby toy store. In the apartment, the twins enjoy climbing onto the couch, running and jumping into a ball pit on the floor, which cracks White up.

“It freaks my wife out every time,” White said, “but I think it’s awesome.”

By the time White is done bathing and putting them to bed, it’s nearly 9 p.m. There’s not enough time in the day for White to dwell on his day job, or what people are saying about him on social media.

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“When he comes home, when the kids are still awake, he is 100 percent focused on them,” Mallory said. “He’s just good at leaving work at work.”

White put it in simple terms: “Whenever I’m in here (the Jets facility), I’m Mike White the quarterback. But whenever I go home, I’m just Millie and Maddox’s dad.”

After the Vikings game, White was packing up his locker when someone stopped to ask if the kids would still be awake when he got home.

“No way,” he said. Then he smiled. “But I’ll see them tomorrow.”

(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; photos: Getty Images, left and center; courtesy of Mallory White, right)

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