Titans QB Cam Ward’s superpower incidentally revealed by Tom Brady in interview on what we all get wrong about young quarterbacks

Tom Brady’s latest interview is impossible to listen to without thinking of Cam Ward

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
Add as preferred source on Google

It’s so easy to get caught up in a quarterback’s physical ability. But the greatest of all time just gave an impromptu seminar on the difficulty and underrated importance of finding a QB who can handle drinking information from a firehose and bringing a competitive mental edge to gamedays. Sound like anybody you know on the Tennessee Titans?

Cam Ward was the answer our judges were looking for. I want to highlight a couple of things NFL legend-turned-FOX Analyst Tom Brady said in his latest interview, how they apply to Ward, his coaching staff that so many Titans fans are heavily scrutinizing right now, and what Brian Callahan had to say when I questioned him on Friday.

Cam Ward’s Greatest Asset Is What Tom Brady Values Most

Ward is an impressive physical prospect. He has above-average arm strength and talent. He’s a nice mover in space. He doesn’t knock your socks off quite like, well, like Will Levis does in that department. But Ward is still impressive by NFL standards.

Where he really shines, though, is with something Brady ranted about in his segment with Colin Cowherd on FS1’s “The Herd” this week. Brady talked through the lens of his own experience growing up in the league, sharing the traits he had that put him above the rest:

“But what I really understood was the mental/emotional part,” Brady said. “I can bring a consistent, competitive winning attitude to practice and the games every single week. Mentally, I could absorb information. You could give me — just like Belichick did — pages of notes, and I could process those things and then take them to the field and play with anticipation. So what I lacked for maybe in a bit of physical development, I far exceeded a lot of other people in mental/emotional development. And that’s a hard thing to evaluate. But I’d also say there’s not many people who even know what to do.”

Can you drink information from a firehose and truly process it? Do you bring a competitive edge mentally on Sundays, something the rest of your team feeds off of and leans on? I think Ward embodies those things. When I asked Callahan about how this sentiment applies to his young QB, he couldn’t agree more with the fit and shared how pleased he’s been so far:

“Very impressed, very impressed with where he’s at,” Callahan said. “His ability to handle the volume of everything you’ve got to handle as an NFL quarterback, not to flinch in a tough environment on the road, was really pretty cool to see. From a management perspective, play-calling perspective, and as quarterback in the huddle. 
That stuff was awesome. I think that’s a pretty astute observation by Tom that everything about playing quarterback in this league is about how you manage and handle the stress of the position… and that involves everything about it on the field, off the field, handling protections in a two-minute drill, handling the run game, all those things matter a ton.

“And the guys whose makeup allows for that ability to handle the volume, and they stay at an even level, those are the guys that play really well when you need them to… Cam’s at least shown he’s up to that task. 
We’ve not been in a lot of those situations yet, but everything he’s shown is that he’s fully capable of handling that.”

It’s awfully early in Cam’s NFL career, but all signs point to him being one of these rare guys Brady is talking about. Those intangible elements of his mind were always a big selling point for this franchise when it picked him in the first place. Through one week of real football, there are plenty of things they want cleaned up with this team, but Cam’s mental “It factor” isn’t one of them.

The Things Brian Callahan Has To Be Teaching Cam Ward

There was a second element of Brady’s soapbox speech, and it bears wondering about when it comes to the Titans. When host Colin Cowherd said he tends to judge a young QB by Thanksgiving of their second year, Brady pushed back by questioning the coaching situation they’ve been in all that time:

“What if you’re a quarterback and you go to a system and they don’t teach you coverage, they don’t teach you cover one, they don’t teach you cover two, they don’t teach you cover four, they don’t have personnel meetings? They give you an offensive game plan, and they go ‘Alright buddy, here you go, figure it out!’ And after Thanksgiving, your second year, they’re going, ‘man, this guy just can’t play anymore. He stinks. You know, he can’t recover.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if most Titans fans heard this come from Brady’s mouth and felt another thread of relatability being tugged on. Whether it’s fair or foul, a lot of people are questioning Ward’s coaching staff right now. Callahan had himself a brutal Week 1 in the press and online. Mistakes were made, and more than one painful sword was fallen upon. It’s not a question I personally have at this point, but I know it’s one being asked by many others: Does Ward have a support system that will set him up for success?

“Like, dude, what did you teach him?” Brady continued about general NFL QB development. “Anything? Did you groom him? Did you spend time after practice? Did you work on the physical parts of his game? Did you work on his throwing mechanics? Did you work on his drops? Did you work on the mental parts of the game? Did you understand how to help him study film better?”

I posed this question to Callahan as well. He and his staff have all been around the block in the NFL, with a lot of exposure to great coaches and quarterbacks alike. Here was Callahan’s explanation on the work they do to throw as much at Cam as he can take:

“First and foremost, I think Bo (Hardegree) does a really, really good job with the quarterback room in general. Very experienced,” Callahan said. “He and I were together in Denver. 
He’s been with the Patriots. He’s been in Miami. He’s been with a bunch of guys that know what to do, and Bo does a really good job of throwing those things at Cam in a meeting room. Then, Nick (Holz) has been around a bunch of different offenses and offensive coaches that do things really well, and I think combine all that experience and my experiences with guys that know how to play the position, Peyton (Manning) and (Matthew) Stafford and those guys that I’ve seen how they go about their prep and what matters to them, and you try to take all those things and dump it into a young player.

“I think we’ve done a good job of prepping Cam for that type of stuff, those really high-level difficulty things, and there’s really no substitute other than just doing it. 
Like, you just got to go throw it at them and see how much they can handle.”

Callahan finished his answer with something he occasionally falls into: an indirect comparison of Ward to Levis. I won’t even accuse him of consciously doing it every time, though I’d be shocked if it wasn’t purposeful at least once or twice. Here’s what he said this time, and for anybody who has watched both quarterbacks, it appears to be painfully true:

“I’ve been around a lot of guys that can handle stuff in the classroom, and then it’s fast on the field,” Callahan said. “Whereas I think the step that Cam makes that makes him unique is his ability to apply in the moment, and he can see and understand it, and then apply it. It’s different than just being able to talk about it on a whiteboard, that’s easy.”

It’s one thing to know what you’re supposed to do. It’s another entirely to be able to do it on the field on Sundays. So far, Cam can. If he keeps it up, he’ll keep rising.

Related Articles