The Tennessee Titans quarterback is one of four featured signal-callers on Season 3 of Netflix’s Quarterback, and after watching all seven episodes, one scene stands above the rest in revealing who Cam Ward really is off the football field.

Last December around the holidays, Ward took a group of local Nashville children on a Christmas shopping spree at a Nashville-area Target. For my money, it’s the series’ most genuine window into the personality behind the face mask, and it’s worth unpacking for Titans fans who want to understand their franchise quarterback on a deeper level.

Ward’s relentless honesty on full display

Ward has been lauded by coaches, teammates, and everyone else around him for his unfiltered authenticity. He carries what you might call an elite golfer’s mentality: never get too high, never get too low. He can’t help himself when it comes to saying what’s on his mind. And that trait showed through in the extreme during this seemingly innocuous.

The Netflix crew cut together some of Ward’s funniest and most honest moments with the kids. He told them to go pick out whatever they wanted, asking if they wanted electronics, genuinely excited to shop with them. But he wasn’t about to let them run wild without some commentary.

“The biggest thing is continuing to pour into them and letting them know to be themselves, cuz I’m myself around them,” Ward said. “I don’t sugarcoat nothing around them. They like to make jokes with me, I make jokes with them.”

And he definitely did. One kid asked for a Nintendo Switch and Ward said sure. Another asked for a PS5 and Ward told him, “you ain’t getting no PS5,” even though a PS5 appeared in the cart at checkout. One kid asked for a VR set, prompting Ward to question whether he’d actually use it — which is funny because Ward spent the year using VR to improve as an NFL player during training camp.

“Of course they wanted to get all the games and stuff, but you know, I made sure they went and got some soap, make sure they stay fresh,” Ward said.

They walked into the sports section and Ward couldn’t resist: “Are you good at football, man? I’d boom your ass if you came across the middle.” He chided another kid for picking out a football that didn’t have Titans colors on it. When one kid grabbed a poker set, Ward shut it down: “You don’t need that yet, you’re not gambling.” Another kid wanted a Magic 8 Ball, and Ward leaned in to explain how it worked, telling the kid to use it first thing when he got home.

One kid checked out with a set of weights. Ward had questions: “You gonna use these weights, bro? You gonna work out? What you gonna use it for? All right.”

These moments are fun, lighthearted, and seemingly small. But they reveal exactly who Ward is. In a candid reflection at the end of the scene, he admitted as much.

“I’m honestly doing it more for me than doing it for them, just because I finally get to see what it’s like, what I was like as a kid,” Ward said.

Throughout all seven episodes, Ward behaves this way with everybody — whether it’s his coaches, his teammates, his parents and family around the Thanksgiving table, or a bunch of kids he just met at Target. The handful of teammate testimonials throughout the series regularly circle back to the same point: Ward is relentlessly honest and consistent in who he is.

That authenticity is something his teammates genuinely appreciate. It’s also something that made him attractive as a prospect to the Titans’ front office. For fans still getting to know the face of the franchise, this Target scene is the distilled version of everything people around Ward have been saying since he arrived in Nashville.