On3's J.D. PicKell hops on the Cam Ward hype train: `He’s the alpha, he’s the leader'

Cam Ward might just become the first Miami Hurricanes quarterback to be drafted in the first four rounds dating all the way back to … gasp … 1992, when Craig Erickson was taken with the second pick of the fourth round.

Heck many projected he would go as a fourth or fifth rounder in this past draft before he opted to return to college.

The last Miami QB taken in the draft? That was Brad Kaaya in the sixth round back in 2017. Prior to that there was a 14-year gap in a QB from the Canes going in the draft, all the way back to 2003 with Ken Dorsey. So yeah, it’s been a while and few and far between. Elite play at quarterback has certainly been missing for most of the last two decades.

Which brings us back to Ward, who brings a heck of a resume to Coral Gables.

A Heisman hopeful (tied for eight best odds), the 6-2, 221-pounder was No. 4 in passing yards in college football last season, finishing hitting on 66.7 percent of his throws for 3,732 yards (311.0 yards per game) with 25 TDs and seven INTs (adding eight rushing scores).  In 2022, Ward started every game for Washington State and hit on 64.4 percent of his passes for 3,231 yards with 23 TDs and nine interceptions (he added five rushing scores). In 2021 at Incarnate Word he was an FCS Second Team All-American and Southland Conference Offensive Player of the Year after completing 65.1 percent of his passes for 4,648 yards with 47 TD passes and 10 INTs (1 rushing score). And as a freshman there in 2020 he won the Jerry Rice Award as the top freshman player in FCS – in six games he threw for 2,260 yards (60.4 percent completion rate) with 24 TDs and four INTs, adding two rushing scores.

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A national believer in Ward? That’s On3 national college football analyst and host of The Hard Count’s J.D. PicKell.

“Cam Ward, man, we all know his physical tools,” PicKell said. “If you’re a Miami fan, you are banking on him very much so at quarterback being the reason why you win the ACC and make the College Football Playoff. I’d buy the hype around Cam Ward not so much because of the physical tools, even though they are special – that is a big reason why you get excited about him. How about what you’ve heard about him, what is being said in-house right now at Miami just about who he is as a leader? As a temperature setter? I get as excited as a college football fan about Cam Ward the alpha at Miami as much as I am the quarterback at Miami. We have been able to communicate with some folks close to Miami, and they all say the same thing, it’s not like there is a discrepancy from one guy to the next. They are all like, `He’s the alpha, he’s the leader.’ That’s contagious, man, very contagious.

“When you have a leader who is leading from the front at quarterback that sets you up for success. Also, in addition to the alpha mentality, in addition to the physical tools mentioned, you hear a lot too about how cerebral he is. I’ll be very surprised if we don’t see Cam Ward have a lot of freedom within this offense to check into what he wants to check into. Just my gut on things. He’s very football-savvy, that’s another thing you hear a lot about him. That’s one thing you worry about with a transfer quarterback like I mention with other guys, can they acclimate to the new offense? Can they get up to speed? Are they able to digest a whole new playbook in the course of a spring leading into Week 0, Week 1, whenever they play their first game? Cam Ward is that guy. He is that guy, is in control of the offense. The physical tools are one thing, I buy the hype because of all the things you hear about him as an alpha and all you hear about him being cerebral in running Miami’s entire system. So get excited about that.”