From Wing-T to Heisman running against QB

The legend of Cam Ward's origin story has grown into a larger story as he went from FCS All-American to Heisman front-runner at the University of Miami.

It was one of those satellite summer camps at Incarnate Word, to which all members of the team's recruiting committee were invited, even those who weren't there. Ward, a rising Columbia High School graduate and zero-star recruit, found himself on the no-possession side of the 50-yard line. But when UIW quarterbacks coach Mack Leftwich looked over, he kept seeing rockets fired by a 6-foot-1, 235-pound Ward.

“In the four to five years that I was at UIW and did camps there, it was by far the best camp performance we had,” said Leftwich, now the offensive coordinator at Texas State.

UIW ended camp with a crossfield comeback throw of the opposing hash, a drill to separate the men from the boys. The ball bounced out of Ward's hand more often than any of the future Power Four quarterbacks there.

After the meeting, Leftwich met with Cam and his father, Calvin, and told them that the UIW would begin recruiting him. But he said he didn't know if Ward would still be available if UIW was willing to offer. Surely larger schools would notice his athleticism in their camps.

“Cameron looks at me and says, 'What is he talking about?' “We don’t hear from anyone,” Calvin said.

Ward had already attended camps at Texas A&M, Houston and Texas State this summer without receiving an interview, let alone an offer. He had all the tools but no tape.

In Ward's first three games in Miami, he threw for 1,035 yards and 11 touchdowns. Throughout his junior high school season, he threw for 1,070 yards and 7 touchdowns while piloting Columbia's Wing-T offense.

Then UIW head coach Eric Morris had recruited Patrick Mahomes, who had received three offers out of high school, to be the offensive coordinator at Texas Tech. But the shock for Mahomes was that no one believed he could make the backyard-style plays that he does in the NFL in college. The bad thing for Ward was that he only threw the ball nine times per game, and he also didn't run the ball because the coaches didn't want him to get hurt.

“It was a difficult task. If I had been at Texas Tech back then, it probably would have been hard for me to take him,” said Morris, now the North Texas head coach. “There was no video evidence of him doing some of the things that he is special at, and that is extending plays and doing some things that are off-script.”

Ward would not leave Columbia in search of an air raid offense. He enjoyed playing with his little league teammates, and his mother, Patrice, was a longtime girls' basketball coach and teacher at the school.

But Calvin took his son to quarterback training on weekends with Steve Van Meter, a retired high school football coach of 35 years. In that first session, Van Meter caught two of Ward's passes during warmups before grabbing his catcher's mitt to protect his left hand.

“From then on I said, 'Cam, you bring receivers.' “I won’t catch you again,” Van Meter said. “‘My golf game is too important. I don't want to break my fingers catching your ball.'”

Ward was raw. He had poor footwork and opened his left shoulder too early. But he was what Van Meter calls a “one-timer,” correcting mistakes the first time he told him.

These throwing sessions allowed Ward to release what he couldn't show in games. His favorite throw was to stand on the numbers and fire a 15-yard throw to the opposing numbers, similar to the pass he wowed UIW with. Van Meter posted these throws on his Twitter account and texted contacts he had developed in the industry about this quarterback who simply needed someone to allow him to show his potential.

“I thought at the time, 'I've been doing this for 35 years and I've had some good quarterbacks.' I think I know a little bit about quarterbacks,” Van Meter said. “'Am I stupid? Don't people see what I see in this child?'”

But UIW monitored Ward throughout his senior season. Morris liked the fact that Ward was a two-sport athlete and the basketball program's all-time leading scorer. And honestly, a few other people had failed.

“I joke that I was a bad recruiter to land on Cam Ward because we missed out on a few other quarterbacks in that class,” Leftwich said.

One afternoon after Ward's senior season ended, Van Meter was out to dinner with his wife when Morris called him. Coach, he said, we're sitting in the office discussing Cam Ward. What do you think about him as a QB?

“I said, ‘Well, no offense. But if Cam was in my offense, you wouldn’t have a chance,” Van Meter said.

Morris laughed. That's exactly what they thought, he said.

And so the state's biggest secret ended up at UIW rather than the junior college.

The Cardinals selected Jon Copeland, a two-time All-American who rewrote the UIW record book, at quarterback for the 2020 season. Ward joined the program as a third-street quarterback, a developmental prospect. Except he didn't see it that way. He told his father that he was going to beat Copeland before arriving in San Antonio in August, to which Calvin responded that he had to hit the brakes.

“Can you hear me?” Cameron asked his father. “Do you believe me?”

Ward, as the kids say, has that dog in him, and he refused to hide no matter how many trainers gave him four-star ratings at the numerous camps he attended. This year, a video went viral of him berating Colorado star Sheduer Sanders for throwing a ball during a summer practice. For some, that was the first sign of what he would accomplish in Miami. But for those who lived through his story, it was the reason he came to Miami in the first place, knocking on the NFL's door four years after being expelled from the FBS house.

“The home visit we had with him, he would have told you he was going to play quarterback in the NFL,” Leftwich said.

But first, he had to win the quarterback job at UIW during a canceled 2020 fall season due to COVID-19.

Ward stormed into his parents' hotel room when he learned his first season was over before it began. But his parents allowed him to see the silver lining: a drop in training would give him extra reps to move on to an air raid attack he had never done before.

Morris agrees that the canceled season was the best thing that could have happened to Ward, who made tremendous progress over the weeks of training and caught up with Copeland until Morris decided to open the competition during some intrasquad duels.

UIW scheduled a friendly game against Arkansas State at the end of the fall. A week before the game, Leftwich called Calvin and asked if he still planned to come. Oh man, Calvin thought, what trouble has Cam gotten into?

I just won the starting quarterback job.

That game never happened (there weren't enough offensive players due to COVID), but the resulting decision had an impact that ACC teams are feeling four years later.

Ward led UIW to a conference championship that shortened the 2021 spring season, won the Jerry Rice Award, the FCS version of the Heisman, and followed that with Southland Conference Offensive Player of the Year honors in the fall.

He transferred to Washington State when Morris got the offensive coordinator job, a Texas kid who followed the only head coach who had his eye on him to the Pacific Northwest. Even though Morris saw so much potential in him in that first summer camp, Ward only recognized it because he knew it was there all along.

“He’s someone who believes in himself when he has a ball in his hands and is competing,” Morris said. “I think this is the first step to being great.”

Ward threw for 3,232 yards, 23 touchdowns and nine interceptions in 2022 — numbers that are all the more impressive considering he did so behind two first-season offensive tackles and a walk-on guard.

When Morris took the head coaching job at North Texas in 2023, Ward could only move if he sat out a year. He had passed every college exam with Morris, but now had to do so without the tutor.

“Now you really have to prove to people that you were the main reason why this happened,” Calvin said. “It’s not a product of the system. It's you.”

Ward threw more yards and touchdowns with a better completion percentage and fewer interceptions.

This performance gave him a chance in the NFL. But Ward decided to do what he had done his entire life: bet on himself. There was still money on the table, and he's grabbing the cash this season in Miami. After two seasons at Washington State, he was informed that he would be selected in the third through fifth rounds of the NFL Draft. After half a season in Miami, this is a top ten pick overall.

Ward is both a cautionary tale and a success story for the modern college football landscape. College recruiting is starting earlier than ever, especially at the quarterback position, where teams want the eventual team leader to lead the recruiting class. But the transfer portal provides a ladder for those late bloomers who fall through the cracks and for those like Ward who know their worth but just need a school to give them a chance before they start climbing rung by rung.

“As a society, we depend on whether you are a three-, four- or five-star hotel,” Calvin said. “I think Cameron’s story really shows that no matter where you start, no one but you can define your end goal.”