Cam Ward’s Ascent From Unknown to Star Outweighs NFL Combine Deferral | Deadspin.com

What does Jerry Rice, the greatest wide receiver of all time, have to do with the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NFL Draft?Cam Ward’s Ascent From Unknown to Star Outweighs NFL Combine Deferral | Deadspin.com

It’s a tangential connection, but the 10-time All-Pro’s name graces the honor given to the top freshmen in the Football Championship Subdivision — and both of the leading quarterbacks in the 2025 prospect class are past recipients of the Jerry Rice Award.Cam Ward’s Ascent From Unknown to Star Outweighs NFL Combine Deferral | Deadspin.com

The circumstances that led prospective top overall draft picks Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders to the Jerry Rice Award could not be more different. Sanders was a nationally ranked top-40 quarterback prospect coming out of Trinity Christian School in Cedar Hill, Texas, but spurned interest from Alabama, Arizona State and Baylor to play for his father and former Rice teammate Deion Sanders at Jackson State.

Sanders debuted at the Southwestern Athletic Conference program in 2021 with no shortage of fanfare, and his run to the Jerry Rice Award marked an expected culmination for the freshman campaign of the second-most hyped FCS recruit in the subdivision’s history — second only to Sanders’ teammate, Travis Hunter.

A season and just a few months earlier, meanwhile, Ward erupted onto the scene in the FCS spring pandemic campaign as an unknown. He became a Division I quarterback without much in the way of film demonstrating his passing ability, having played for a Columbia High School team in Texas that ran the Wing-T offense.

In 2022, before he debuted with Washington State, Ward told me his high school’s nearly run-exclusive offense called for “bootleg [plays] five times a game,” which were the quarterback’s only opportunities to showcase his arm.

After “so many Power Five [conference] schools… and even [Division] III schools” passed on Ward, as he described, budding FCS powerhouse Incarnate Word in San Antonio gave the quarterback the opening he needed.

In his Jerry Rice Award-winning season, Ward passed for 2,260 yards and 24 touchdowns against just four interceptions — and did so in a truncated six-game schedule. His first full season with the Cardinals produced 47 passing touchdowns and more than 4,600 yards.

The rest is well-established history, from a strong two seasons at Washington State to his ascent to true superstardom as a Heisman Trophy finalist in 2024 at Miami.

Ward proved himself in college with minimal high school film to supplement his recruitment. Now that he’s an established playmaker with several seasons of production to vouch for his credentials, Ward is happy to finally be able to rely on his game tape to state his case.

“Five years of film says everything I can do,” Ward told reporters Friday when announcing his decision not to throw at the NFL combine in Indianapolis.

Ward plans to instead demonstrate his arm talent for interested professional scouts in the more intimate setting of the University of Miami’s pro day on March 24.

Even that session seems more like a formality than anything. Barring something disastrous in the next two months, Ward and Sanders will both join former North Dakota State quarterback Trey Lance as the second and third former Jerry Rice Award winners selected in the first round of the NFL Draft.

Each quarterback will look to follow Cooper Kupp as the next Jerry Rice Award winner to add All-Pro to his career résumé. That’s a goal further down the road, of course, and contingent on a variety of factors.

But considering his out-of-nowhere rise to win the Jerry Rice Award as a college freshman, don’t be surprised to see Ward flourish in the NFL right away. The lack of combine passing will have as much effect on that as his lack of high school tape had on his UIW debut.