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Andrea Adelson, ESPN Senior Writer
Every week, Darrell Colbert Jr. gets on a group FaceTime call with the quarterbacks he trains to go over their performances, the good and the bad. Their relentless competition during their offseason sessions carries into the phone calls, as they compare stats, throws and even interceptions.
But this week, there was no call.
Not with Cam Ward and Kyron Drones set to square off against each other Friday night as No. 7 Miami faces Virginia Tech (7:30 ET, ESPN/ESPN App) in a pivotal ACC game. There is nothing for them to say until the final seconds tick off the clock.
How they got here speaks to the unpredictability that goes with life as a quarterback. Here we have two people playing the position from Texas, cousins on their mother’s sides, who were rated very differently as prospects in high school: Ward barely recruited, Drones a four-star prospect.
Yet they both landed where they were meant to be, thanks to the transfer portal: Ward at Miami, as one of the leading early-season Heisman contenders, and Drones at Virginia Tech, where he finally feels like he is home.
If you had told Colbert when he started working with Ward and Drones that one day he would board a plane to Miami to watch them play against each other, he would have laughed.
“This was never supposed to happen,” Colbert said.
Ward and Drones grew up less than an hour from each other outside Houston but had no idea they were related until high school. Even then, their first introduction came as quarterbacks seeking out the right personal coach to improve their skills.
As their dads watched them work out with retired Texas high school coaching legend Steve Van Meter, they got to talking. Calvin Ward told Kevin Drones that Cam was playing at West Columbia High. Kevin, a longtime assistant high school coach in the state, said his wife was from a nearby town called Angleton. Calvin Ward said his wife was from Angleton too.
They each made a call home. Sure enough, their wives were second cousins and had grown up together. But as they got older and moved to different towns and got busy with their respective families, they lost touch. Cam and Kyron allowed them to reconnect, and the familial connection grew the relationship between the quarterbacks.
After Van Meter returned to full-time high school coaching, Drones and Ward needed another quarterback coach to help them. Drones connected with Colbert his junior year of high school in 2019 thanks to his coaching staff. Colbert, who is 28, played for Drones’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach during his high school career, so he knew the ins and outs of what they wanted Drones to do.
Ward started working with Colbert too, in 2021, following a year at FCS Incarnate Word.
“We definitely got closer as we started training together,” Kyron Drones said. “It gets real competitive. Real talking trash and picking each other’s brain on how to get better. We’re all trying to get to that end goal, which is the NFL. Hopefully, we’re in the same draft together.”
Indeed, Ward graduated high school one year before Drones, in 2020. Stuck playing in a wing-T offense, Ward had so few opportunities to throw that recruiters never paid him much mind. The truth is, the Wards did not even realize how good Cam could be until they started working with Van Meter. Ward had plans to play basketball in college. But during one of their early training sessions together, Van Meter pulled Calvin Ward aside.
“Watch this,” Van Meter told Calvin Ward.
Van Meter had Cam get on the right hashmark, and he had the receiver get on the left hashmark and run a 15-yard out. Cam hit him perfectly.
“So he told Cameron, ‘Look, you can probably go across the country and find any 6-foot-2 shooting guard in basketball, but you’re probably one of the best 6-2 quarterbacks that I’ve ever coached,’ and he had coached 30-something years in high school,” Calvin Ward said. “So from then, his mindset switched that even though he was not in a system in high school that can showcase his talents, there may be an avenue here.”
Although Calvin crisscrossed the country taking Cam to camps, the only scholarship offer he got was to Incarnate Word. So he took it.
Meanwhile in Pearland, Texas, Drones also was an overlooked high school prospect early in his career. He, too, dreamed about playing college basketball. But as a junior in 2019, he led Shadow Creek High to a state championship — with his dad on the coaching staff. Soon the offers started pouring in.
Initially, Drones favored going to Auburn. But then COVID-19 shut down recruiting his senior year and he was unable to take any official visits.
Drones ended up taking the last Power 5 offer in the state of Texas, heading to Baylor in 2021. But after two years there, Drones was still the backup and decided he wanted a fresh start. He entered the transfer portal. Virginia Tech was the first school that came to see him in Waco.
“He was just looking for somebody who was willing to give him a chance and be honest about giving him a chance,” Kevin Drones said. “We felt that immediately with Virginia Tech. We just wanted to have an opportunity, a truthful opportunity, not just lip service or you already have a guy that you’ve promised or whatever. Just, just be truthful and honest.”
Drones arrived in Blacksburg in 2023 and did not win the starting job right away. He became the starter only after Grant Wells got hurt early in the season. But once Drones got his opportunity, he did not look back. Drones started 11 games last year, capping it with a Military Bowl record with 176 yards rushing in a 41-20 win over Tulane, showing off why many considered him to be one of the best returning dual-threat quarterbacks in the country.
Ward, meanwhile, had finally gotten the Power 5 opportunity he always wanted. But it was not Miami. Not yet, anyway.
In two years at UIW, he threw for 6,908 yards and led the school to a conference title in 2021. He transferred to Washington State in 2022 and threw for over 6,000 yards in two years there, too. When Ward chose to enter the transfer portal following the 2023 season, Drones knew there would be a good chance he would get to play his cousin this season.
It just took awhile before anyone knew for sure. Ward was undecided about returning to college. So undecided, in fact, that he entered his name for the NFL draft. His parents moved him into an apartment in Jacksonville, Florida, in January so he could begin draft prep work with a trainer there.
But something gnawed at Calvin. Cam had told him before declaring for the draft how much he loved playing college football, and how much more he had left to prove. “I think I’m a first-round draft pick,” Cam told his father.
The NFL draft advisory board had him rated as a middle- to late-rounds pick. Calvin reminded Cam about their conversation as the deadline to pull his name from the draft approached. Miami had remained in contact with Cam, hoping he would change his mind.
“He said, ‘If you were me what would you do?'” Calvin recalled. “I said, ‘This is your decision.’ He said, ‘I want to go to Miami.’ If you could have seen his face, it was like Christmas lights.”
Calvin says that happened two days before the draft deadline. He and his wife, Patrice, helped Cam pack up the apartment he had just rented. Cam registered for a grad program at Miami online. Then they were off, driving down Interstate 95 with Cam driving his car and his parents driving a rented SUV with Cam’s 135-pound Rottweiler, Uno, making the trip alongside them.
With Ward joining the Hurricanes, preseason expectations soared. But they also soared for the Hokies, who returned Drones, along with their leading rusher, top four receivers and nearly everyone on the offensive line. When the ACC schedule was finally released in January, Ward and Drones saw the dream matchup: Virginia Tech at Miami, Sept. 27.
“I have had this game circled,” Drones said.
Colbert offered some advice, since Ward and another quarterback who works out with them, Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders, played each other last year.
“I told Kyron, ‘Just know that the whole week Cam is not going to talk to you; don’t expect him to say hey before the game,'” Colbert said with a laugh.
But Colbert added that the looming game fueled their competition even more during offseason workouts. Perhaps more for Ward, who has never been shy about talking a little trash.
“Let’s say we’re doing a drill and Kyron throws the ball a little high or a little behind,” Colbert says. “Cam would say, ‘Oh, that’s a pick against my guys.’ A lot of times it’s little shots: ‘That’s a turnover on downs, now I’m going to score.’ Cam always starts it.”
Cam Ward credits the workouts with Colbert, and training with Sanders and Drones, for helping him get better.
“He’s one of the best quarterback coaches in the game,” Cam Ward said. “With me, Shedeur and Kyron, Darrell gets us right. He also lets us have our own little style in the workouts to how we play our game. He makes us hone in on the little things, and that’s what I feel like I’ve been better at.”
Ward has gotten off to a hot start this season, ranking No. 2 in the nation in passing yards (1,439) while leading undefeated Miami to 209 total points — the most the Hurricanes have scored in the first four games of any season.
Virginia Tech has gotten off to a slower start at 2-2 as Drones and the offense try to find their footing. Kevin Drones noticed Kyron putting too much pressure on himself earlier in the season and told him to play loose and have fun. So far, Drones has 974 total yards of offense, with six touchdowns and three interceptions.
But as Ward said after a win over USF last week, what happened up until now is irrelevant. ACC play begins with a familiar face across the sideline, a highly anticipated matchup in the Ward and Drones households. Unfortunately for Kevin Drones, he will not be able to attend as he has a high school game to coach that night.
But his wife, Olinka, will be there. So will Patrice and Calvin. The two cousins will see each other before the game before going to sit in their respective team sections. Colbert will not be able to take sides. Rather, “Hopefully those guys can go out there and have one of those legendary games, so every time I turn on social media for the rest of the weekend, I just see Kyron Drones and Cam Ward.”
Ward was, predictably, fairly tight-lipped when asked about the opportunity to open ACC play against Drones. “I’m just ready to play the game,” Ward said.
Kyron on the other hand?
“Cam’s going to see when we play Miami,” he said. “[I’ll] just show him who the real No. 1 is.”