Cam Ward has been the talk of college football through two weeks of the season. He met with reporters to discuss Ball State and the progress of the team:
On whether the offense is playing its best football: Nah, we're not even close to our best football if you go back and really watch the tape. From the first game, I would say there's a minimum of 10 bad plays just from a quarterback and receiver standpoint. And from this last game, the biggest takeaway was with the fourth downs. That's just us not doing little things. That's something that we gotta clean up.
We say we wanna win games, but if we don't clean up the little stuff now, it could hurt us in the back end. So we're getting better at that. We got better at it this week, working those situations, working the right concepts that we're supposed to run. But we're gonna continue to chop wood at it and keep playing ball.
On his deep ball: I really give the receiver a chance. It's better to underthrow a deep ball than to overthrow it, because it's harder for a receiver to make adjustments when it's overthrown. If it's underthrown, [the receiver can] come back and go get the ball, possibly get a PI (pass interference). Me and the receivers work those a lot throughout the week. Even when I first got here in January, we were working deep balls. That's just something that we get better at every week. We didn't hit it last week like we needed to, but we worked on it. I'm just excited to get another opportunity at it and to let the receivers go make a play.
On how the challenges he is embracing in Week 3: As far as myself, I would say it’s having urgency with every drop that I take. And ball placement, being real nitpicky with myself, I would say is the biggest thing. [I want to] make sure the whole offense and team in general has urgency. If we have urgency, that'll take care of a lot of stuff.
We gotta have the will to keep playing. My hardest days of practice are the Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we know that. I don't know how your body feels and nobody cares what your mind says. You just gotta bring it every day. That's something that we’re sticking to.
On cutting his turnovers so far this season: It’s practice and offseason workouts. Playing my style while limiting the negative plays and not making a bad play worse. Just limiting those and playing within our system. Not doing too much. We’ve been doing that the first two weeks, but we gotta continue that.
On the biggest difference since he got here: The communication being at a high level, especially with the transfers that we got in the summer. They came in and [adhered to] the standard that we put in the culture and they came in ready to work. I'll also say the discipline that we're playing with. We got way better with penalties since fall camp. Now, we have some penalties from last game that we're going to clean up. But the overall discipline of the team, I feel like it's where it needs to be. But we’ve still got to get better at that.
On the critics saying he holds the ball too long: They don't watch film. A lot of people don't watch film, they just go watch highlights. It's a different thing getting on YouTube, watching a play, then actually going on XOS and clicking rewind and watching the whole play. I really don't worry about that, because the only thing that matters to us as a team and myself is the people in this building. Everybody has their own opinion, I have mine.
On the running game: The O-line, the running backs, tight end group, that whole running scheme helped me out a lot. Especially when we do our heavy play-action stuff. We got guys running wide open. J-Lyle got a lot of the meaningful reps last week. It was good for him for how young he is. Damien and Fletch is the best running back duo in the country. They can play similar if they need to, but they can play different if they need to. They're both good at pass protection. They both can catch the ball out of the backfield. They obviously can run it. I feel like what they don't get praise for is how they set up blocks, how they set up their cutbacks. They're the best running back duo in the country. They made my job easier. Sometimes we can RPO it, but the majority of the time, I just hand it off and let them do them.
On whether the offense is playing its best football: Nah, we're not even close to our best football if you go back and really watch the tape. From the first game, I would say there's a minimum of 10 bad plays just from a quarterback and receiver standpoint. And from this last game, the biggest takeaway was with the fourth downs. That's just us not doing little things. That's something that we gotta clean up.
We say we wanna win games, but if we don't clean up the little stuff now, it could hurt us in the back end. So we're getting better at that. We got better at it this week, working those situations, working the right concepts that we're supposed to run. But we're gonna continue to chop wood at it and keep playing ball.
On his deep ball: I really give the receiver a chance. It's better to underthrow a deep ball than to overthrow it, because it's harder for a receiver to make adjustments when it's overthrown. If it's underthrown, [the receiver can] come back and go get the ball, possibly get a PI (pass interference). Me and the receivers work those a lot throughout the week. Even when I first got here in January, we were working deep balls. That's just something that we get better at every week. We didn't hit it last week like we needed to, but we worked on it. I'm just excited to get another opportunity at it and to let the receivers go make a play.
On how the challenges he is embracing in Week 3: As far as myself, I would say it’s having urgency with every drop that I take. And ball placement, being real nitpicky with myself, I would say is the biggest thing. [I want to] make sure the whole offense and team in general has urgency. If we have urgency, that'll take care of a lot of stuff.
We gotta have the will to keep playing. My hardest days of practice are the Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we know that. I don't know how your body feels and nobody cares what your mind says. You just gotta bring it every day. That's something that we’re sticking to.
On cutting his turnovers so far this season: It’s practice and offseason workouts. Playing my style while limiting the negative plays and not making a bad play worse. Just limiting those and playing within our system. Not doing too much. We’ve been doing that the first two weeks, but we gotta continue that.
On the biggest difference since he got here: The communication being at a high level, especially with the transfers that we got in the summer. They came in and [adhered to] the standard that we put in the culture and they came in ready to work. I'll also say the discipline that we're playing with. We got way better with penalties since fall camp. Now, we have some penalties from last game that we're going to clean up. But the overall discipline of the team, I feel like it's where it needs to be. But we’ve still got to get better at that.
On the critics saying he holds the ball too long: They don't watch film. A lot of people don't watch film, they just go watch highlights. It's a different thing getting on YouTube, watching a play, then actually going on XOS and clicking rewind and watching the whole play. I really don't worry about that, because the only thing that matters to us as a team and myself is the people in this building. Everybody has their own opinion, I have mine.
On the running game: The O-line, the running backs, tight end group, that whole running scheme helped me out a lot. Especially when we do our heavy play-action stuff. We got guys running wide open. J-Lyle got a lot of the meaningful reps last week. It was good for him for how young he is. Damien and Fletch is the best running back duo in the country. They can play similar if they need to, but they can play different if they need to. They're both good at pass protection. They both can catch the ball out of the backfield. They obviously can run it. I feel like what they don't get praise for is how they set up blocks, how they set up their cutbacks. They're the best running back duo in the country. They made my job easier. Sometimes we can RPO it, but the majority of the time, I just hand it off and let them do them.
