Ricky
White.
Ricky
White.
UNLV· 6'1"· 181 lb· 4.61s 40
"A Mountain West record-setter whose draft case rested on two things nobody could time with a stopwatch: hands that win in a crowd and a punt-block trait that led the entire FBS."Pre-draft read
Outside receiver who lived on the boundary at UNLV and won with timing and body control rather than burst. He tracks the deep ball as well as any Group of Five receiver of his cycle, adjusts late to back-shoulder throws, and plays through contact at the catch point with quiet, strong hands. The release package is savvy because he has to manufacture what he cannot run to.
He is a build-up strider, not a twitchy separator, so his production came on vertical shots, comebacks and third-down conversions rather than manufactured touches. The signature is special teams: a punt-block specialist with elite timing off the edge who led the FBS with four blocks as a senior. That trait, plus the contested-catch profile, is the whole draft case.
Vertical play-action offense that uses him as a boundary X on isolation routes, with a coordinator who will actually invest him in punt-block schemes.
Year 1: practice squad receiver and core punt-rush specialist. Ceiling: WR4 who wins fades and third-down comebacks.
A motion-and-spacing offense that asks him to win from the slot on option routes, where his lack of short-area burst is exposed on every rep.
His value curve rises or falls entirely on whether a staff schemes the punt-block trait.
Ricky White III | 2024 UNLV Highlights
Senior-season reel: contested catches on the boundary and the punt blocks.
Ricky White III Highlights — Welcome to the Seahawks
Draft-day cutup of his deep-ball tracking and red-zone finishing.
The Duality of Ricky White III
Feature on the receiver-and-punt-rusher combination that defined his senior year.
White is a three-year UNLV starter who arrived from Michigan State and turned into the most productive receiver in program history over a two-year window. His identity is a big-play boundary X who beats coverage with route detail and ball tracking, not with a 4.4 gear, and who plays a physical brand of football on every rep.
The production is real: 88 catches for 1,483 yards and eight scores in 2023, then 79 for 1,041 and 11 touchdowns as a senior while defenses rolled coverage to him every week. He was a two-time All-American and the Mountain West Special Teams Player of the Year, and he blocked four punts in 2024 alone. The flags are just as clear — a 4.61 forty at 181 pounds, a slight frame that lets press corners reroute him, and a route tree that leaned heavily on verticals and comebacks against Group of Five corners.
The board had him as a late Day 3 flier whose special teams value was the floor and whose contested-catch feel was the upside. Seattle took him with the final pick of its class, pick 238, and the logic was clean: you are not paying for separation, you are paying for hands, toughness and a punt-block trait that wins games.
- 01
Ball tracking
locates and adjusts to the deep ball as well as anyone in the class, with late hand placement on back-shoulder and sideline throws.
- 02
Contested catches
plays bigger than 181 pounds through contact and finishes through hits, which is how 11 of his 79 catches went for touchdowns in 2024.
- 03
Punt block trait
led the FBS with four blocked punts as a senior and won Mountain West Special Teams Player of the Year on pure timing off the edge.
- 04
Release craft
stems, head fakes and tempo changes let him beat press without the burst to simply run past it.
- 05
Production under attention
1,483 yards in 2023 and 1,041 more in 2024 while being the only receiver defenses had to account for.
- 01
Long speed
a 4.61 forty at the Combine caps the vertical threat he lived on in college and shrinks the throwing windows he can create.
- 02
Play strength
a narrow 181-pound frame gets rerouted by physical press corners and loses leverage on the release.
- 03
Route tree
the UNLV usage was heavy on verticals, comebacks and go balls, with little intermediate or option work on tape.
- 04
Level of competition
the volume came against Mountain West secondaries and did not have a Power Four sample to validate it.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.61sp50
- Vertical
- 36inp50
- Broad jump
- 123inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Rec | Yds | TD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Michigan State | 3 | 10 | 223 | 1 |
| 2022 | UNLV | 12 | 51 | 619 | 4 |
| 2023 | UNLV | 14 | 88 | 1483 | 8 |
| 2024 | UNLV | 13 | 79 | 1041 | 11 |
| Career | — | 42 | 228 | 3366 | 24 |
Receiving splits verified against CFBD season data; UNLV three-year totals (218 rec, 3,143 yds, 23 TD) match UNLV Athletics' draft release exactly, and adding his 2020 Michigan State line yields the 3,366-yard career figure Seattle published. He recorded no statistics in 2021 at Michigan State, so that season is not listed. Games are counted as appearances with recorded stats.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
- Hajj-Malik WilliamsQB21%
- Matthew SlukaQB16%
- Kayden McGeeWR8%
#3 of 17 tracked contributors · Produced well above his snap share · Offense explosiveness 1.31 (p73) · CFBD — usage x PPA per tracked player
Contested-catch depth receiver who survives on teams value and red-zone reps.
Technique-and-toughness receiver whose hands outran his testing numbers.
Late-round athlete whose career never got past special teams and the practice squad.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Seattle waived him at the initial 53-man cutdown in August 2025 — the second of its three seventh-rounders let go — after he failed to climb past the third-team offense in camp and, more damning, never made the special teams impact the pick was built on. He cleared waivers and re-signed to the practice squad the next day, spent the fall there, and got two standard elevations in November, dressing against Washington and Arizona without seeing a target. Zero receptions, zero snaps that changed anything, on a Seahawks team that went 14-3.
The honest read is that the draft case was one skill deep and the skill did not travel in year one. NFL punt units protect better than Mountain West ones, and a 4.61 receiver without a special teams edge has no path to 46 game-day spots. He is back on a reserve/future deal for 2026 with an ERFA year ahead, so the story is not finished — but a seventh-round pick who spends his rookie season on the practice squad and never touches the ball is exactly the outcome the speed number warned about.
Data note: Receiving splits verified against CFBD season data; UNLV three-year totals (218 rec, 3,143 yds, 23 TD) match UNLV Athletics' draft release exactly, and adding his 2020 Michigan State line yields the 3,366-yard career figure Seattle published. He recorded no statistics in 2021 at Michigan State, so that season is not listed. Games are counted as appearances with recorded stats.