In 2020, on his first day at the University of the Incarnate Word, Cam Ward walked into the office of head football coach Eric Morris and told him he was going to be his starting quarterback. Not eventually;that year, despite the fact that the Cardinals returned a freshman All-American passer who led the school to a conference championship the previous season.
A zero-star recruit coming out of high school, Ward got up and left after delivering the message, shutting the door behind him.
“I didn’t say a word. … That was the whole conversation right there,” Morris, now the head coach at North Texas, told FOX Sports. “This kid had never taken a shotgun snap when he said that to me.”
But he had time. Ward joined UIW — the only Division I program to offer him a scholarship — in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, which postponed the Cardinals’ season. He got more than four months of practice without game preparation. He became comfortable in the offense — so much so that when UIW scheduled Arkansas State for late November that year, Morris declared an open competition at quarterback between Ward and the incumbent for their scrimmage ahead of the game.
Ward proceeded to play “lights out,” according to Morris.
“It was obviously a hard conversation for me to have with our freshman All-American that he wasn’t going to start that game,” he said. “But our whole team was [for Ward]. The most evident thing was that Cam was the best player on this football team.
“Unfortunately, we were about to get on a plane for that game and our whole D-line was contact traced out for a positive COVID test and we didn’t get to play,” he continued. “But that was the first time for us as a coaching staff to say, ‘Hey, this kid’s different when he gets into his game mode.’”
The NFL will soon learn for itself.
The projected No. 1 overall selection, Ward brings his unshakable confidence to the professional ranks as a hopeful franchise quarterback. It came with him from little West Columbia, Texas, and through his long-winding, underdog journey — via FCS Incarnate Word, Washington State and Miami. It’s obvious in his viral interactions with friend and training partner Shedeur Sanders, a fellow top quarterback prospect in this year’s draft. It was abundantly clear at Miami’s Pro Day in March, when he completed a pass and immediately looked over at the Tennessee Titans brass, telling them that he was “solidifying” his status as the No. 1 overall pick.
The confidence is shaped by his journey, and by a mentality that won’t let him rest.
“I’m not worried about no spotlight,” Ward said at the NFL Combine in February. “There was one time in my life where I wasn’t in the spotlight. It’s crazy to see how everything can change.”
‘He has a boulder on his shoulder’
Recruiters wouldn’t see the vision with Ward.
Even though he played in Columbia High School’s Wing-T offense, which limited his throwing opportunities, a heavy dosage of five-step drops were put in the playbook to take advantage of his skill set.
“We didn’t do the wide-open spread offense because, overall, our team was not set up that way. We didn’t have those types of kids around him to run that type of offense,” Brent Mascheck, Ward’s high school coach, told FOX Sports. “We can’t recruit guys to fit those [roles]. We got to play with the guys we got.”
Between Ward’s junior and senior seasons, Columbia even held several days of 7-on-7 periods for college coaches to see his arm talent up close. SEC and Big 12 coaches sat on Mascheck’s couch. But they all said Ward was too slow. They didn’t like his body type. He was too heavy (as a senior, he weighed around 240 pounds). One SEC quarterbacks coach told Mascheck that he believed Ward would be a star, but said that the offensive coordinator and head coach didn’t want him.
Schools that said they’d come to watch him play never showed up. Others would tell Ward to come on a visit, but wouldn’t give him the time of day in-person.
“He has a boulder on his shoulder,” Ward’s mother, Patrice, told FOX Sports. “So many people giving him false hope.”
But when Ward went to camps that featured four- and five-star quarterbacks, he held his own. He saw that he was just as good, if notbetter, than them. That’s all the validation he needed to stay confident.
A family friend who trained Ward and his older siblings would remind them of their reality as athletes from West Columbia, a town of less than 4,000 people about 60 miles from Houston.
“‘You guys are from the country. Guys outside of Houston, outside of Highway 6 in Houston, nobody believes you guys can play. So when you get your chance on the stage, when the lights come on, you have to play,’” Ward’s father, Calvin, recalled of the message. “And it was regardless of if it was football or basketball or baseball.
“That’s how his mentality [was shaped],” he continued. “‘Nobody thinks I can play. Nobody thinks I’m good enough. But when I get to go against some of these city kids, they’re about to find out.’”
‘It’s like Cam plays in slow motion …’
Opponents found out at Miami, where he led three comeback wins after trailing by at least 10 points in the second half. He set program single-season records for passing yards (4,313) and touchdowns (39). He broke the Division I record (FCS and FBS) for career passing touchdowns.
At Miami, Ward set single-season program records for passing yards (4,313) and touchdowns (39) en route to winning the 2024 Davey O’Brien Award, given annually to the best quarterback in college football. (Photo by Leonardo Fernandez/Getty Images)
Behind the scenes, Ward was getting to the Hurricanes’ football facility by 5:30 a.m. to watch film. Around 1 or 2 p.m., he’d run home to take care of his dog, get some food, return to the facility and stay there until 9 or 10 p.m.
His preparation was nothing new. At Incarnate Word, Ward grew so immersed in the offense that Morris trusted him to make checks at the line of scrimmage as a freshman. In high school, during training sessions with longtime quarterbacks coach Steve Van Meter, Ward wanted to make throws to out routes and comebacks from the middle of the field and the far hash. For an additional challenge, Van Meter set up drills in which Ward rolled out of the pocket to either side. He’d have to side-arm balls back over the middle of the field, getting him in the habit of layering passes over would-be linebackers.
As a child, he viewed misbehaving in class as a route to punishment. Bad conduct marks in school meant that he couldn’t practice later with the Columbia High School girls’ basketball team that his mother coached.
For early morning workouts that meant driving to the north side of Houston, he’d wake his father up, telling him it was time to go.
“It took us a long time as parents to learn, probably his second year at Washington State. We’re like, ‘Cameron is harder on himself than anybody can ever be,’” Calvin Ward told FOX Sports. “We honestly had to start approaching stuff in a different direction. … [It was,] ‘I missed this read here.’ ‘OK, dude, you were 34-of-40 for 400-something yards and five touchdowns and y’all got the win.’ [He’s like,] ‘Yeah, but I missed these two reads here.’”
Over two seasons at Washington State, Ward threw for nearly 7,000 yards and 48 touchdowns. (Photo by Jordon Kelly/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Ward’s intense focus between the lines is in sharp contrast to who he is off the field. His former coaches describe his fun-loving, joking demeanor in the locker room pregame. But that demeanor would flip to a “killer instinct” come game time.
Ward’s evolution, according to Morris, has come in knowing when to lean into the different aspects of his personality.
“I think he’s grown a lot in the last four or five years,” said Morris, who also coached Ward at Washington State as the Cougars’ offensive coordinator. “And being able to know he’s got to carry himself to a different standard. He is a silly kid at heart. He likes to have fun. He likes to joke around. But just understanding that he’s going to carry a lot of weight within the organization and especially from a players’ standpoint. And so I think he’s learned how to separate the two things. I think it’s probably helped that he’s had to go and build new relationships with two new teams.
“He was the Day 1 starter at Washington State. He had to win over a locker room. He was also a Day 1 starter in Miami. He had to win over a locker room. So I think a bunch of those things and experiences have allowed him to grow and really gotten him ready to be able to step into an NFL locker room now and be a leader of men.”
His smarts will help, too.
In high school, defensive coordinator Earnest Pena was convinced that Ward knew the offense as well as the offensive coordinator. His linemen turned back to him pre-snap at the line of scrimmage for reminders of their responsibility in the play call. He told the Columbia coaches the vulnerabilities he saw in the opponent’s defense.
In college, he showed a knack for being able to recite what he’d just seen coverage-wise in the previous series and then propose tweaks and adjustments. His pocket presence developed at a young age — his time as a basketball player and throwing shot put and discus at Columbia gave him a strong foundation in spatial awareness.
“It’s like Cam plays in slow motion,” Van Meter said, “and everybody else is running as fast as they can run.”
‘It’ll work out’
Calvin Ward couldn’t lie.
Reflecting on his son’s difficult recruiting process — all the false hope and the dead ends and the phone calls and the cold reach-outs and the efforts to get offers that never materialized — he doesn’t know that he’d do it all over again.
“For any parent going through it,” Calvin Ward said, “I would love to just give them the knowledge of how the process really is, because it’s tough when you’re from a small area.”
It was frustrating for Patrice Ward, too. All the work with trainers that went unrecognized. The college coaches who wouldn’t seem to listen.
Her son seemed unfazed, though.
“Cameron was the one who said, ‘Mama, don’t say nothing else,’” Patrice said. “‘It’ll work out.’ So I just told him, ‘I’m going to leave it in God’s hands.’
“And that’s what happened.”
Ben Arthur is an NFL reporter for FOX Sports. He previously worked for The Tennessean/USA TODAY Network, where he was theTitans beat writer for a year and a half. He covered theSeattle Seahawks for SeattlePI.com for three seasons (2018-20) prior to moving to Tennessee. You can follow Ben on Twitter at@benyarthur.
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