Latest news with #UniversityoftheIncarnateWord
USA Today
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Who is Cam Ward's girlfriend? Here's what we know.
Who is Cam Ward's girlfriend? Here's what we know. Miami QB Cam Ward appears to be on his way to being the No. 1 overall pick of the 2025 NFL Draft, unless there's a huge surprise. And that means we could see him in the NFL Draft green room with friends and family celebrating. Which brings us to the question you're here wondering about: Does Ward have a girlfriend who could be celebrating with him on Thursday night? According to reports, yes -- he's apparently dating Nailah Landon, a former University of the Incarnate Word volleyball player. The pair have been seen together on TIkTok, so maybe we'll see them on the red carpet and in Green Bay for the 2025 NFL Draft. There you have it!
Fox News
23-04-2025
- Sport
- Fox News
How Cam Ward built his unshakable confidence: ‘He has a boulder on his shoulder'
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 not better, 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. 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.'" 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 the Titans beat writer for a year and a half. He covered the Seattle Seahawks for for three seasons (2018-20) prior to moving to Tennessee. You can follow Ben on Twitter at @benyarthur. Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account, and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily!
Axios
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Your guide to Fiesta San Antonio 2025
Fiesta San Antonio starts Thursday, bringing 11 days of parties, music and culture to the city. Why it matters: Fiesta raises millions of dollars for local nonprofits and brings thousands of attendees to the core of the city. Between the lines: While Fiesta has evolved to celebrate cultures, food and all-around puro party vibes, it has a complicated history. But, Fiesta's expansive list of events gives people the freedom to celebrate and plan their itinerary in a way that reflects their values. How it works: Fiesta is a giant umbrella with more than 100 official events — free and ticketed. And there are plenty of themed, offshoot events happening at bars and restaurants. Basically, you'd be hard-pressed not to find someone with a flower crown and/or confetti in their hair for the foreseeable future. State of play: Fiesta Fiesta will kick off the fun 4-10pm Thursday at Travis Park. It's a free party with music, food and lots of medal trading. The weekend continues with a list of headline events. Oyster Bake is Friday and Saturday at St. Mary's University. Hours vary; tickets start at $30. A Taste of New Orleans starts Friday and lasts through Sunday at Sunken Garden Theater. Hours vary; tickets start at $22. Alamo Heights Night is 5:30-11:30pm Friday at the University of the Incarnate Word. Tickets start at $20. What to try: Fiesta is full of flavor. While A Night in Old San Antonio (NIOSA), heralded as a hub for eats, doesn't start until Tuesday, vendors at each of this weekend's events will have Fiesta's iconic snacks for sale. Take it from Edmund Tijerina, longtime local food writer, who tells Axios oyster shots at Oyster Bake are a must. If you go: Keep an eye on the weather as storms could bring some rain Thursday to Fiesta Fiesta. What's next: NIOSA (Tuesday through Friday), Battle of Flowers Parade (Friday) and the Fiesta Flambeau Parade (Saturday).
Fox Sports
23-04-2025
- Sport
- Fox Sports
How Cam Ward built his unshakable confidence: ‘He has a boulder on his shoulder'
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 not better, 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. 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.'" 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 the Titans beat writer for a year and a half. He covered the Seattle Seahawks for for three seasons (2018-20) prior to moving to Tennessee. You can follow Ben on Twitter at @benyarthur . Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account , and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily! recommended Get more from National Football League Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more
NBC News
23-04-2025
- Sport
- NBC News
Cam Ward could be the most unlikely No. 1 NFL draft pick ever
To Steve Van Meter, it seemed obvious that the high school sophomore had every quality a college coach would want in a quarterback. Academically, Cam Ward was near the top of his class. Athletically, he was his high school's leading scorer in basketball and a naturally accurate passer in football. When Van Meter, a retired coach who specialized in coaching quarterbacks around the Houston area, asked him to tweak his throwing mechanics, Ward could process the information and make the change by the very next rep. And then there was his explosive right arm. The first time he watched Ward throw, the battle rotated so fast that it whistled. 'I was a head Texas high school head coach for 28 years, and coached 38 years in high school and I've had Division I quarterbacks,' Van Meter said. 'The ball didn't come out of the hands like that on anybody I've ever coached.' Yet when Van Meter evangelized about Ward's skill set to the network of college coaches he'd cultivated over the decades, all he heard was pushback. Ward played in a small town and in an offense far from the norm and that offered few opportunities to pass. It was enough to scare off recruiters. He entered the summer of 2019, just weeks before his final high school season, without a single college scholarship offer. 'It got to the point where I was just kind of questioning myself,' Van Meter said. 'I was like, 'Do I even know anything about this? Why aren't these people seeing this?' I know no one throws it like this kid does.' Nearly six years later, Ward, now 22, is projected to walk across the stage Thursday at the NFL draft as the No. 1 selection — and in the process become perhaps the unlikeliest top pick in the league's modern history. It's not just that Ward began his college career at a lower rung — it's that he barely had the chance to play college football at all. It's why many close to Ward believe the biggest question about him was never about his talent, but whether any college program would take the risk to recognize it. 'I've had numerous coaches tell me how much they loved him, and they just couldn't take a chance,' said Eric Morris, who offered Ward his first and only college scholarship when he was the head coach at the University of the Incarnate Word, a private Catholic school in Texas. 'I'm like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah — whatever. Of course you do now that he's had all that success.'' From Baker Mayfield, who turned down Division I scholarship offers to walk on at Texas Tech before finding fame at Oklahoma, to offensive lineman Eric Fisher, who was unheralded when he signed with Division I Central Michigan, overlooked recruits have gone on to be selected No. 1 in the NFL draft. Quarterbacks Josh Allen (Wyoming) and Aaron Rodgers (California) also went from being lightly recruited high schoolers to earning NFL MVP honors. Yet these are exceptions in a draft in which recruiting rankings have been shown to correlate to future NFL draft selections. Five-star recruits hold a much higher chance of becoming first-round picks. When Ward showed up at Incarnate Word's campus in San Antonio for a football camp in the summer of 2019, he was not an unknown commodity among Texas college coaches. The previous year, Ward and his father had attended as many college camps as possible to gain the exposure he'd lacked as the starter in high school in West Columbia, a small city an hour south of Houston. There, Ward's team ran a 'Wing T' offense that primarily ran the ball, a style that was an anachronism in a state in which the spread offense was king, with quarterbacks throwing sometimes 50 times a game to four or five receivers. Brent Mascheck, Ward's high school coach, said he felt it was a 'cop-out' for recruiters to cite the Wing T as a drawback in assessing Ward's talent, rather than trusting their own projections. From Austin to Dallas, Ward crossed the state hoping that displaying the arm that was rarely unleashed on his high school tapes could earn him a scholarship. Yet, at a time when it has never been easier for a recruit to be noticed — thanks to athletes' own social media posts and the booming media coverage around high school football recruiting — Ward held zero scholarship offers only weeks before his senior season. On a five-star recruiting scale, Ward had zero. Texas A&M, like a handful of other schools, was close to offering but ultimately never did, Van Meter said. To Mascheck and Van Meter, several college coaches expressed a sentiment that goes far beyond the case of Ward — that it was too politically difficult to vouch for an unheralded recruit over a four- or five-star, even if a coach was convinced the lower-rated player was a better fit. 'If you try to bring that kid to that head coach, you better know what you're doing because if you don't, if that kid doesn't pan out, then guess what? You're looking for a job,' Van Meter said. With less than 6,000 undergraduates in 2019, and playing in the NCAA's second-highest division, Incarnate Word was a speck in the hierarchy of big-time college football and wasn't competing for five-stars. 'It was a little bit easier to take a chance on a kid,' said Morris, now the head coach at North Texas. Success hinged on finding good players who were hidden in plain sight. Ward's performance at the school's camp was "phenomenal, as good as a camp workout as I've ever seen," said Morris, who had coached future NFL quarterbacks Mayfield, Patrick Mahomes and Case Keenum in college. Yet even then, the school's coaches were 'second-guessing ourselves,' said Mack Leftwich, then offensive coordinator under Morris, to understand why they were seemingly alone in recognizing Ward's potential. Said Morris: 'We're all scratching our heads, kind of, 'What are we missing here?' As a college coach, I think you're starting to look for all the negatives. What are the negatives about this kid? And just as we kept doing research, there were no negatives.' Said Leftwich: 'In that situation, you have to just be able to trust your evaluation and trust your instincts on a kid.' That summer, the staff was still intrigued by Ward's potential when Morris, during a staff meeting, called Van Meter and put him on speakerphone to ask for his impressions. That no one else had offered made the school cautious to be the first. 'I said, 'Well, Coach, don't take offense to this, but if Cam was in my offense, or in any spread offense that let him throw the ball 25, 35, 40 times a game, you guys wouldn't have a shot at him,'' Van Meter said. 'And everyone on his staff started laughing. But [Morris] said, 'Coach, that's exactly what we've been talking about — we think we got a steal.' I said, 'Coach, I promise you, you got a steal.'' Ward's throwing mechanics needed polishing and there was the question of how consistent a quarterback who had attempted just 267 passes in three seasons in high school could be when throwing 40 or more attempts per game in college. Mascheck said one college coach was critical of Ward's frame, which at the time was about 6-foot-1 and around 240 pounds, about 20 pounds heavier than he weighed at February's NFL Combine. What sold Incarnate Word was partly watching Ward's basketball tape. Ward had been raised around the game — his mother coached at the high school — and he played with his eyes up in traffic, anticipating open teammates and driving lanes, a job not dissimilar from playing quarterback. The staff loved that he hated to lose, drawing inspiration from Kobe Bryant. It also didn't hurt that Incarnate Word wasn't asking Ward to be its savior. The school already had an All-American-caliber starter at quarterback whose presence would allow Ward at least two seasons, in Leftwich's belief, to learn a spread offense as a backup with little pressure. When Covid canceled Incarnate Word's fall 2020 season, Ward had even more time to learn the spread offense's nuances during practices. That extra development time proved critical. Ward walked into Morris's office on his first day on campus as a freshman and declared he would win the starting job not in two seasons, but that fall. It came true, just three months later, after he'd made 'about one or two plays a day where you're like, 'Oh my gosh, this kid has a chance to be special,'' Leftwich said. 'His confidence in what he does on a day-to-day basis, and not getting nervous or scared no matter who's across from him, is one of the strongest qualities,' Morris said. In one practice, Ward somehow curved a pass around an oncoming blitzer perfectly into his receiver's hands. Leftwich, now the offensive coordinator at Texas Tech, said that hours later, Incarnate Word coaches had gathered to rewatch the play at least 15 times. Ward was an anomaly. His rise was helped, however, by enrolling in college at a time when NCAA rules changes no longer required transfers to sit out a season, giving players who started at smaller colleges more upward mobility. With the transfer portal open, Ward transferred to Washington State in 2022 (after Morris left to be the Cougars' offensive coordinator) and then in 2024 to Miami, where he increased his draft stock by replicating his big production against more difficult competition. Along the way, Ward has drawn praise for his coolness under pressure and an outward confidence that puts teammates at ease — traits that were on display in high school, too, if anyone was looking. While at Incarnate Word, Ward and his offensive coordinator, Leftwich, spoke about the possibility of him one day playing in the NFL. In fact, before Ward had even played a game for Incarnate Word, Leftwich was spending Thanksgiving in 2020 with his family when he told his father and brother, another college coach, that tiny Incarnate Word had a future NFL quarterback on its roster. This week, Ward will make that prediction come true. And it may never have happened without the willingness to offer Ward what no other team would. 'Holy cow, we just coached a potential No. 1 overall pick at the University of Incarnate Word,' Leftwich said. 'It's pretty unbelievable, honestly.'
