There’s no bigger lie in the NFL draft than “You know a franchise quarterback when you see one.” College football isn’t churning out enough quality passers to make the adage true, prospects don’t receive enough hours to develop once they make it to the pros, and the league’s front offices can’t establish a clear process for how to differentiate a quarterback with an impressive draft profile from a truly exceptional player.
The one thing the league knows, though, is that having a talented quarterback on a rookie deal can be one of the best advantages, which is why quarterback-needy teams keep taking chances on imperfect prospects at the top of the draft. Since the rookie wage scale was introduced in 2011, 10 of the 14 first picks have been quarterbacks. Of those players, only five are currently playing on the team that drafted them (and that includes the most recent two, Caleb Williams and Bryce Young). The first two in that sample, Cam Newton and Andrew Luck, are already retired. Newton, the top pick in 2011, is the only one of those 10 no. 1 picks to make an All-Pro team, and only five players in the group have won more than one playoff game.
The truth is, finding a passer who is good (or can become good) enough that you want to sign him to a second contract is a coin flip at best. But those odds are seductive enough to convince even an eternal pessimist to take a chance. That’s why teams like the Rams and Panthers gave up substantial future draft capital to move up to no. 1 to take Jared Goff and Bryce Young, respectively. And it’s why the Tennessee Titans have made it all but a certainty that they’ll draft Miami quarterback Cam Ward at no. 1 this year.
Yet, despite a strong belief that Ward will be the first player off the board next week, much of the quarterback discussion this draft season has reminded me of 2013, 2014, and 2022—when EJ Manuel, Blake Bortles, and Kenny Pickett were the top passers in their respective classes but were never seriously considered to be worth drafting with the first pick.
But it would be a disservice to Ward to lump him in with those three quarterbacks. Ward is a significantly more talented and experienced player, having started for five years at three colleges and earned consensus All-American honors. He won the Davey O’Brien trophy in 2024 and threw 158 total touchdowns in his career at both the FBS and FCS levels. So why is there a lack of heat surrounding Ward?
To gain a complete understanding of Ward as a prospect, project his future in the league, and evaluate where he stacks up in the lineage of first picks, I’m going to grade him on every critical factor.
Ward’s Résumé
Ward’s pathway to the presumptive no. 1 pick takes us to a few different stops. He played quarterback in a Wing-T offense in high school and had no stars and just one D-I offer, to FCS school the University of Incarnate Word. There, Ward won the Jerry Rice Award (the FCS version of the Heisman for freshmen) and Southland Conference Player of the Year honors after throwing for 4,648 yards and 47 touchdowns in his second season. Going back to that footage, you see the rough outline of the quarterback we see today. His throwing mechanics were raw, but he had obvious arm talent, and he was certainly too good to be playing at the FCS level much longer.
When Incarnate Word’s head coach at the time, Eric Morris, got the offensive coordinator job at Washington State, Ward made the jump to the FBS level with him—and that’s where most of the college football world was first introduced to him as an NFL prospect. Ward threw for more than 3,000 yards and more than 20 touchdowns in each of his two seasons for the Cougars, but his Wazzu film shows that he took way too many sacks and needed to tighten up his mechanics. He reportedly received a day-three draft grade at the end of the 2023 season, and he ultimately decided to stay in college for one more year.
Ward transferred to Miami and had a true breakout season in 2024, throwing for 4,313 yards and 39 touchdowns. He finished fourth place in Heisman voting, behind Colorado defensive back/wide receiver Travis Hunter, Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty, and Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel.
In many ways, Ward’s story is heartening and makes him easy to root for, but his football pedigree doesn’t perfectly align with what we’ve come to expect of a top pick in this era. Of the 10 quarterbacks picked first since 2011, eight won a Heisman Trophy and/or national championship in college—Goff and Luck are the only exceptions. Luck is an unfair comp for Ward: He was a better overall prospect, finished second in Heisman voting, played in a pro-style offense at Stanford for a coach (Jim Harbaugh) with NFL bona fides, and is the son of a former pro quarterback. Goff had a similar trajectory to Ward, improving year over year before entering the league.
None of this is to say that Ward isn’t deserving of the no. 1 pick, but it helps explain the difference between him and, say, Williams or Young from the past two drafts. But a better way to evaluate Ward is by diving into the tape—not by reading off bullet points on what would amount to his football LinkedIn page.
Arm Talent
Ward’s pure arm talent—both how fast and how far he can throw the ball downfield—is where he is closest to the elite passers in the NFL game, so we’ll start there. He won’t whiz a 70-mile-per-hour spiral over the head of a linebacker, but he can plant his feet and drive passes from the pocket to all three levels of the field. If you’re a nerd for quarterback mechanics, you’ll notice Ward’s balance is consistent, he has good weight transfer when it’s time to throw, and there’s no wasted movement in his upper body when he’s delivering passes.
In the clip above, Ward calmly gets to his launch point, and when it’s time to make the pass, he flashes the torque and arm strength he’ll need to deliver the ball to the intermediate area of the field once he gets to the NFL. Whether he’s operating a timing-based play-action passing scheme or working primarily from the shotgun in Tennessee, Ward can get the ball wherever it needs to go, meaning his future coaches won’t have to design an offense around any physical limitations.
Grade: B
Arm Control
Just as important as the power of a quarterback’s arm are the ways he harnesses that strength to manipulate defenses. Ward’s general accuracy across the field is good, but he’s at his best when he can add some touch on deep passes outside of the numbers.
The throw itself on the fade route above isn’t mind-melting, but Ward has a knack for making these difficult passes look routine. The placement on that back-shoulder pass is indicative of a player with several years of starting experience and an understanding of how he can beat good defense by making better throws.
In the middle of the field, though, Ward can run a bit more hot-and-cold. His best reps look like the clip above, in which he shows off a combination of velocity and good ball placement, getting the throw to his receiver in a closing window while protecting his teammate from an incoming collision. Ward is on balance, his mechanics are clean and snappy, and his low release point helps deliver line drives through an unconventional passing window. This is something he’ll need in order to succeed in the NFL as a 6-foot-2 quarterback with short arms.
Ward throws with arm angles that are reminiscent of young Lamar Jackson at times, and that style of passing has its issues. In the clip below, Ward is in a rush to defeat pressure with a throw, and speeding up the throw means he can’t drive this pass through his lower body. When a quarterback’s feet and base get wide on throws like Ward’s did here, it puts more strain on the upper body to give throws velocity. That often comes at the expense of accuracy. The decision Ward made was the right one, but the throw was poor because his throwing mechanics were off. If you watched 2024 first-round pick Michael Penix Jr. in his time at Washington, you saw him miss throws for similar reasons.
Accuracy and ball placement should be graded on a sliding scale because not all missed throws are indicative of the same throwing processes or mechanical problems. The pinnacles of accuracy in the present-day NFL are quarterbacks like Josh Allen, Justin Herbert, and Patrick Mahomes, who never have to sacrifice velocity or depth of target to put the ball exactly where they want. There are also NFL quarterbacks who shine by throwing accurate passes either on the move or from different arm angles, such as Matthew Stafford and Lamar Jackson. And there are generally accurate passers like Joe Burrow and robotic types like Goff and Kirk Cousins who can be highly accurate when the schematic conditions are right.
There’s also a particular style of quarterback in today’s pro game that I can best describe as possessing “contextual” accuracy. These players are the more aggressive passers, guys who are willing to take chances downfield in a way that I believe makes it hard to extricate the decision-making and the result of the play from the quality of the pass. Geno Smith, Dak Prescott, Drake Maye, and Brock Purdy are quarterbacks I think of in this category, and Ward fits here as well.
Ward has more than enough arm talent and ball control to be an accurate passer at the next level, and he generally puts the ball where it’s supposed to be. This has been a major area of growth for him during his college career and probably the biggest reason he’s gone from a projected day-three pick in the 2024 draft to the presumptive top pick this year. Ward’s completion rate has improved in each of his past three seasons since moving to the FBS level, and so have his yards per attempt, which is a strong data point proving that he hasn’t sacrificed pushing the ball downfield for the sake of inflating his completion numbers.
Because of his mechanics, he’ll be prone to a couple of poor passes per game, but I expect Ward’s accuracy to be much more of a boon to his success than a potential hindrance.
Grade: B
Pocket Management
By now, you should be noticing a trend. As we work through the critical elements of quarterback evaluation, each additional trait helps to maximize the prior ones. A quarterback’s footwork and athletic ability will help them efficiently get to the throws they want to make and away from the pass rush and pocket breakdowns that cause negative plays. This is where it gets more difficult to project Ward as an NFL passer because his pocket presence and overall athleticism make up the bulk of the case against him. It’s clearly the part of his game he struggles with the most.
Ward is an ambitious passer—he wants to attack downfield as often as a defense allows him to. Because he’s hunting for big plays, he’s developed happy feet in the pocket. I suspect he’s anticipating the need to escape the pass rush before launching the ball deep. There are times when this bad footwork is inconsequential, and his bouncing around doesn’t get him into irreversible trouble. You can see an example of this in the clip above. The deep throw wasn’t there, and Ward was able to get the ball out underneath without taking any contact, but his poor pocket management is what created the slight pressure he had to avoid before throwing his checkdown.
Williams, last year’s top pick, had this issue at USC, and it manifested itself during his rookie year in Chicago as he took 68 sacks, tied for third most in NFL history. So there’s legitimate cause for concern that Ward will expose himself to unnecessary contact once he’s in the NFL if this bad habit isn’t corrected soon. What I’d like to see more consistently from Ward are clips like the one below, where his feet are calm until he needs to reset away from the pass rush. He does so aggressively by attacking through a gap in the pocket and working away from rushers until a passing option becomes available. When he’s playing this way, there’s little stopping him from being as efficient as he is explosive when the pocket breaks down.
Grade: C+
Mobility
As far as raw athletic ability, Ward is a functional scrambler, similar to Mahomes. In the clip below, you see Ward show the same kind of decisiveness as Mahomes when escaping from the pocket. Ward is fast enough to take the open yardage before getting out of bounds. Knowing your quarterback can and will do this opens things up in the dropback passing game because, as a coach, you know he won’t be overwhelmed by inconsistent pockets. When Ward plays like that, he looks like the kind of prospect that can shoulder the load of getting an NFL offense out of trouble. The problem is that he’s far too inconsistent at it.
Grade: B-
Decision-Making
I prefer the phrase “decision-making” instead of “processing” when it comes to quarterback evaluation because there are too many instances where one can conflate play design with a quarterback’s football IQ. Just because a player’s eyes are scanning from one side of the field to another doesn’t mean that they’re properly identifying what they’re looking at—in many instances, it’s exactly the opposite. On most plays, the best decision-makers know where they can go with the ball before the snap and quickly go from one look to the next, taking shortcuts in their passing progression.
Ward isn’t as consistent a decision-maker as he should be given his extensive college experience, but it’s not a recurring problem either. He works within the structure of his offense and generally knows where to go with the ball if defenses take his primary options away. In the clip below, Ward sees after the snap that he’s getting a single-high safety look and wants to take a deep shot to his slot receiver on a fade. When his receiver fails to separate, Ward quickly snaps his eyes to the backside and throws an accurate dig to move the chains.
Not only is this a good play in its own right, but it easily translates to the NFL. As a quarterback, if you have the right process but your opponent wins the rep anyway, a quality player keeps his offense on track by efficiently moving through his reads.
If these kinds of throws were the only thing we saw on his tape, there wouldn’t be much debate about his NFL readiness. Unfortunately, Ward has a habit of pushing unnecessary boundaries and regularly taking chances downfield just to see what he can get away with. In the clip below, he’s intercepted while trying to push the ball into a tight window near the sideline.
This was a particularly frustrating play because this was a route concept Miami ran multiple times in this game. Ward made the right read on a touchdown throw I highlighted above when discussing his raw arm talent. Ward made the right decision in this situation before, so he knows what throws not to make, but he can’t help but try his luck.
Still, Ward’s downfield aggression isn’t necessarily something you want to completely take out of his game because playing with ambition is what separates the talented from the elite at the next level. However, he will have to be brought down to earth at times by his NFL coaching staff and learn quickly from his mistakes until he figures out what he can and can’t get away with. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but if he struggles early in his career, inconsistent decision-making will likely be a reason why.
Grade: B-
Ward’s Ranking Among Past Classes and Other No. 1 Picks
As a draft analyst, I’ve evaluated each of the 19 quarterbacks who have been drafted in the first round since 2020 using the same scale of critical factors I’ve used here for Cam Ward. Not all factors can be weighed equally for every quarterback; you must account for play style, execution of the scheme, size, age, and how each player fits into the league in their respective draft class. With that in mind, I’d place Ward 10th in that group of first-round quarterbacks from the previous five drafts. That lands him ahead of Tua Tagovailoa, J.J. McCarthy, and Young—and just behind Jayden Daniels, Justin Fields, and Jordan Love.
Diante Lee’s Quarterback Grades for First-Round Picks Since 2020
When comparing him to the 10 quarterbacks taken first overall since 2011, I’d place Ward eighth—behind Williams and Kyler Murray and ahead of Goff and Baker Mayfield. To me, Ward straddles the line between quality starter and true blue-chip talent, and how you feel about the value of a quality starter will influence whether you think Ward deserves to join the exclusive club of top overall picks.
No. 1 Pick Quarterback Grades Since 2011
Player Comp and Projection: Slim Ben Roethlisberger
When I watch Ward tap his feet and jump around in the pocket, I don’t think as much about Murray or Williams, who are a bit more agile and twitchy as athletes. I see someone closer to a young Ben Roethlisberger, who was prone to leaving the pocket to extend plays, was accurate on throws outside of the numbers, was bold with his downfield passing, and had enough arm talent to get the ball wherever he wanted it to go. Ward possesses these same qualities, and there’s an argument that he has more arm talent and better accuracy than Roethlisberger did as a rookie in 2004. In a best-case scenario, early in his career, Ward will be able to get help from the play calling, the scheme design, and his supporting cast, allowing him to be a playmaker on obvious passing downs.
For all of Roethlisberger’s best traits, some of his bad on-field habits cost him early in his career, and this could be true for Ward as well. Roethlisberger struggled to avoid sacks because of how he maneuvered in the pocket, taking 40 or more sacks in six of his first 10 seasons. He also threw a dozen or more interceptions in nine of his seasons, even though he tried to get the ball out of his hands quickly in the latter stages of his career. The challenge for Ward will be knowing when to scramble and when to hang in the pocket and determining which downfield risks are worth taking.
Where does a Roethlisberger-esque career land you in the modern landscape that asks its quarterbacks to solve problems with their mobility, efficiency working through progressions, and balance between aggression and risk aversion as a decision-maker? I think the most optimistic case is for Ward to turn into a player like Dak Prescott, C.J. Stroud, Geno Smith, or Jordan Love—each of whom is at a Pro Bowl level and is potentially in reach of All-Pro play in ideal circumstances. His floor is somewhere between those of Mayfield, Goff, and Purdy, a quarterback who has enough tools to be a quality starter but more often than not is a product of the circumstances around him.
If you’re not blown away by Ward’s potential, I’d argue that’s only because of a mythical standard of play for the no. 1 pick that’s unsupported by the data from the past decade and a half. Ward isn’t just the no. 1 quarterback in this class because of a weak field of competitors; his play on the field merits it. I see him as a foundational piece for Tennessee to build a winning team—even if he isn’t a singularly transformative player.
If his name is called first next week, the Titans won’t just be filling a position of need—they’ll be taking a significant step toward competing in the AFC again.
