Thor Nystrom provides the 2025 NFL Draft Scouting Profile for Miami's Cam Ward, including an incredible backstory about he was almost overlooked for a college scholarship.
Cam Ward NFL Draft Scouting Report
Miami (FL) | 6-foot-2/220 pounds
Player Comp: Jordan Love
Rank: QB2
It was late—January 2020 in West Columbia, Texas—mere weeks from National Signing Day—and Cam Ward had still not received a scholarship offer. The previous summer, Ward found himself off to the side at recruiting camps on the campuses of Houston, Texas A&M, and Texas State. Not a single coach spoke to him.
Ward could really spin it. His arm was so strong that a retired coach that Ward trained with on weekends asked Ward to bring his own receivers after the first session, fearing broken fingers. But none of the college coaches at the camps Ward attended seemed to notice.
Cam Ward was a faceless zero-star recruit. Ward’s high school ran a Wing-T offense. Though he was the starting quarterback, Ward attempted less than 10 passes per game. Prior to his senior year, he had never thrown for 1,000 yards in a season.
At a satellite camp on the campus of FCS Incarnate Word that summer, Ward found himself segmented off with the other participants that had not previously been recruited by UIW. But he was there, and he had a ball, so Cam Ward let it fly.
At one point, UIW’s QB coach, Mack Leftwich—who was running drills on the field—glanced toward the sidelines and saw a spiral traveling 50 yards in the air. Leftwich found the thrower of the ball and made sure he was next to the quarterbacks on UIW’s recruiting board for the final drill of the day—comeback routes past the opposite hash, an arm-strength exhibition.
Incarnate Word’s young head coach—Air Raid guru Eric Morris, who had played for Mike Leach at Texas Tech—had been waiting all day for that drill. Morris had gotten the UIW gig because he was Patrick Mahomes’ OC at Texas Tech on Kliff Kingsbury’s staff. Morris was actively looking for a young quarterback to develop.
What Morris witnessed next was a quarterback he had never seen before destroying the group of known quarterback recruits surrounding him. Cam Ward had the strongest arm on the field that day, and it was not particularly close.
In the days that followed, Morris called Ward’s high school to request football and basketball film. By the time Morris and Leftwich called to request a home visit in early-2020, Ward had reconciled that he was likely going to have to play JUCO ball. But Morris and Leftwich had an open scholarship, and they wanted to see if they could polish the big-armed diamond in the rough. It was the only Division 1 scholarship offer that Cam Ward received.
The FCS canceled the 2020 fall season—Ward’s first at Incarnate Word—due to COVID. Eric Morris later called that a blessing-in-disguise for Ward’s development, because it gave Ward extra time to learn the Air Raid system while he and Morris worked on technique.
The 2020 FCS season was moved to the spring. Ward surprisingly won Incarnate Word’s QB1 job out of camp, and posted a stellar 24/4 TD/INT rate during the abbreviated slate. In 2021, Ward won the Jerry Rice Award, the FCS Heisman.
At that point Eric Morris left to become Washington State’s offensive coordinator, and Ward followed him to Pullman. Between 2022-23, Ward threw for nearly 7,000 yards with 61 total TD for the Cougars. Ward initially declared for the 2024 NFL Draft, but he changed his mind after the NFL draft advisory board returned a mid-to-late round grade.
Miami seized the moment by bumping their NIL offer to exceed what Ward could have expected to make Year 1 as an expected Day 3 pick. Ward repaid the Hurricanes by throwing for 4,313 yards and a 39/7 TD/INT rate. He finished No. 4 in Heisman voting.
If Eric Morris and Mack Leftwich had not discovered Cam Ward at the satellite camp, Cam Ward would have enrolled at the JUCO level during the COVID season where it was canceled. There is a strong chance that his raw skillset never would have been developed. Five years later, Cam Ward heads into the pre-draft process as betting favorite to be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft.
What Does Cam Ward Bring To The NFL Draft?
Cam Ward’s got a high-voltage right arm, and there isn’t a throw in this world that he doesn’t think he can make. Ward’s game is a freewheeling, shoot-em-up display of aggression and creativity. He even talks like John Wick. “My mentality on the football field is (I) don’t give a (expletive),” Ward told The Athletic.
When Ward gets cooking, watch out. Ward is a full-field reader, and he trusts what he sees implicitly. He has an elastic, twitchy arm, shooting the pill out from unorthodox sidearm slots. This is a useful trick under duress, but the extra arm action and non-repeatable upper-body mechanics do have slightly deleterious effects on his overall accuracy and placement. He modulates speeds well, and has feathery touch when he needs it.
Ward’s pocket work took a huge step forward in 2024, where his pressure-to-sack ratio improved from 24.9 to 16.4. He’s difficult to sack because he senses pressure and is a twitchy short-area mover with the feet to evade and escape.
Ward’s 2,329 career passing attempts in college all came in Air Raid systems. Ward is one of this class’ most cerebral quarterbacks pre-snap. Ward is keenly interested in the way that defenses align to match his receivers in space. He’s quick to relay information back to his teammates, and to adjust the formation, protection, or play as needed. By this point, Ward could call offensive plays in the booth for an Air Raid offense.
Ward hates to check down, and he doesn’t like to throw the ball away. He will keep hunting until the bitter end. He generates explosive plays this way. But it’s also where you see wanton recklessness. Ward has a particularly bad habit of forcing impossible attempts across his body when he’s run out of options on a scramble—leading to interceptions over the middle.
Ward’s turnover-worthy play rate of 3.3 in 2024 was spookily similar to every season he’d played before it (between 3.3-3.6 all five seasons). He managed that despite ratcheting up the aggression, with Dawson’s modified Air Raid calling for more downtown shots. Between 2023 and 2024, Ward’s aDOT spiked from 7.7 to 9.8, and his YPA jumped from 7.7 to 9.5.
Ward absolutely has more arm talent than Shedeur Sanders. There’s no question. But Ward can be fooled by coverage looks, and he walks himself into unforced errors in ways you never see with Sanders. Ward has an exciting ceiling either way. He profiles as a Day 1 starter in the NFL.
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