WESTFIELD, Ind. – Charvarius Ward walks to the media tent at Grand Park briskly, a man on a mission. He navigates his way through the cameras and the crowds with ease, leaving the media members scrambling to their spots in his wake. But as soon as he gets in front of the microphone, Ward takes a beat and smiles.
"I'm doing great, man," the cornerback proclaims joyfully. "Doing great."
That's who Ward is: a man on a mission who still knows how to find joy in everything, especially football. And with his talent and skill level, that's not all that difficult to do. Ward quickly made an impact in his first training camp practice with the Colts, showing off his coverage skills as he matched up against wide receivers Alec Pierce and Michael Pittman Jr..
"Very impressed," head coach Shane Steichen said after practice. "You saw how sticky he was and the plays he made. I don't know how many he made today, but he made a ton. So, great to have him on the team."
The Colts knew the kind of player they were getting when they signed Ward in free agency: a confident, hungry player who worked his way from being an undrafted free agent to an All-Pro cornerback who can cover the best receivers in the league. So, even though he's joining a new defense and working to show off everything he's capable of, Ward isn't planning to change who he is at all.
"I don't feel like I gotta prove nothing, because I know who I am," Ward said. "I know what I'm capable of. If anything, if I'm proving something to anybody, it's proving it to myself, that my All-Pro year wasn't a fluke. I know I can do it again, and I know I'm going to do it again. So I just work on myself every day, mentally, physically and emotionally, and I just go out there and ball."
When Ward earned second-team All-Pro honors in 2023, he led the league with 23 passes defensed (18 pass-breakups, five interceptions). In his seven-year career, Ward has recorded at least 10 passes defensed in four of his six seasons as a full-time starter and held opposing quarterbacks to a completion percentage of 55 percent and an 82.5 passer rating when targeting him in coverage. In playing for the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers, Ward knows what it takes to succeed, whether it's winning the Super Bowl as he did in 2019 with the Chiefs, or just having a successful training camp.
"It's kind of what I've been striving for my whole entire life, even going back to junior college," Ward said. "Just putting in extra work, extra reps, working on the physical, the mental, everything, getting ready for a long training camp. It's a grind. It's gonna be hard, there's gonna be hard days, dog days. But I like I said, when I work on my mental strength, try to wake up every day with joy and happiness, I come out here and this is the easy part."
Ward's mental strength – of which he clearly has a lot – comes from everything from affirmations to prayer to reading books. The cornerback carries himself with the kind of confidence that allows him to believe wholeheartedly that he will be an All-Pro again, and that the Colts' secondary has the potential to be one of the best secondaries in the NFL.
"Force turnovers, make plays and just have fun, play with swag and confidence," he said. "Everybody out there flying around, and maybe we can intimate teams on the field by the way we run and hit."
On Wednesday, Ward and the rest of the Colts got a glimpse of what their secondary is capable of – and with pass-breakups, interceptions and consistently strong coverage, it was just what they expected.
"Man, it's go time," Ward said. "It ain't time to be easy...it's time to get ready for the season, time to get ready for a long run, hopefully to make the playoffs. So we all in, 10 toes deep right now."
