Behind the scenes talk about Titans QB Cam Ward is more like folk tales of Paul Bunyan than top QB draft picks of the past

People talk about Cam differently than most

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
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Tennessee Titans quarterback Cam Ward
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I’m going to try to explain something about how I hear people talk about Cam Ward. Hopefully it works and you, dear reader, can pick up what I’m putting down. Here we go: The Tennessee Titans cannot say enough glowing things about their new franchise quarterback. At the podium, in passing at practice, or in private, it’s all the same. They already love their guy. That is, of course, not surprising. They were convicted about drafting him first overall and bucked any trade offers thrown their way.

But something about the way that they speak about him is a common theme across the football landscape. Let’s start with a recent example: ESPN analyst Louis Riddick was on 104.5 The Zone here in Nashville this week, and had this to say about his adoration of Cam Ward:

“He's exactly what Tennessee needs. That's the kind of personality of at that position that Tennessee needs. That's the kind of skill set that Tennessee needs to take that offense and really level it up.

He comes from a great family of super supportive people, super nice people. And he is just uniquely zeroed-in on trying to be the best damn quarterback he can be. And that's it. That's all he cares about. Why wouldn't everybody in Tennessee go and put their arms around him and go ‘just lead us, man’? ‘We're going to ride your coattails.’ That's exactly what you want. And he's built for it. He's just simply built for it.

I'm as convicted on this young man in terms of his makeup as any, whether it was Jaden Daniels last year or C.J. Stroud the year before, I'm very much Team Cam Ward.”

Now that’s a statement said with some chest. There’s no shortage of bass in Riddick’s voice, he’s ten-toes-down on Cam Ward. And his contribution to the conversation is just a part of a larger whole that I’d like to try to describe here.

I've been noticing and talking about this since March at the NFL Combine. Every person that I have talked to the past couple of months that has had some kind of intimate relationship, or interaction, or viewing experience of Cam Ward—whether they're calling games, or have coached him, or were teammates of his—they all talk about him in a way that is different than how I am used to hearing people talk about QBs.

Now, I’m not going to act like I've been doing this for a super long time. But I’ve been in this business for multiple years, and I've been covering the draft for four years now. So I've had a fair share of conversations and exposure to people in these positions for a decent sample size of draft cycles. Just ball-parking it, let’s call it 15 players that are potential first of second round prospects that we’ve talked a ton about during my time doing this professionally.

Typically when a guy just loves a prospect—a “my guy” of theirs—the way that they talk about them is glowing in a football sense first and foremost. It’s all about “he does this so well, and this is his superpower on the field,” etc. It's from a scouting standpoint first and foremost.

The Cam Ward conversation is different. Now don’t get me wrong, the scouting love for what he put on tape is abundant too. But every time I’ve talked to one of these people with proximity to him, there’s something that I walk away thinking about, trying to figure out how much weight I give it. I don't want to be hyperbolic, but it sometimes feels like I’m being told about this messianic football figure. It's clearly a reflection of an “it” factor that Cam has.

If you can’t tell, it’s hard to really put into writing the feeling I’m trying to get across. Sometimes it's like you're talking to somebody after they saw a ghost. They’re entranced by whatever they’ve seen from him, and they can't quite explain it. But they believe so wholeheartedly in what they saw, and they can't help but want to evangelize about it to everybody else.

Put simply, people tend to be more rabidly passionate about trying to convince you about this guy Cam Ward than similar conversations I’ve in the past about top-pick QBs. The impact that Cam Ward has had on the people that have had proximity to him in college is different from the impact that these other top flight quarterbacks—first, second, third overall picks—have had on the same people that I've talked to. And it's impossible for me not to notice that.

No, I’m not saying Cam Ward is football Jesus. He may very well not pan out in the NFL. What I am trying to say is that it's hard for me to not put pretty significant weight into the unique way he’s talked about, because it feels like something exciting is coming. And it’s an excitement that’s palpably different from what I’m used to experiencing from top QB prospects. So do with that information what you will.

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