Louisville football: Marshon Ford represents a new pathway for Cards

From little known walk-on to potential NFL prospect, how Louisville football’s Marshon Ford is paving the way for a new type of player for the Cards.

Nearly 45 years ago, Daniel Eugene “Rudy” Ruettiger showed us what it meant to work hard, preserve through all obstacles, and achieve a boy’s dream to play college football. Since then, there have been countless “walk-on” stories that have inspired us around the same themes. Perseverance, hard work, dedication all put forth in order to achieve one’s goal against all odds. Louisville football fans have watched many walk-on’s have success as Cardinals, but none quite like Marshon Ford.

At this time last year, if you’re anything like me, you knew very little, if anything at all, about the Cardinals walk-on – besides maybe the fact that he played TE. As a two-sport star at Ballard High School in Louisville, KY, Ford flew under the radar as a recruit and ultimately walked-on at Louisville to play for the then-head coach, Bobby Petrino.

Ford took a redshirt his first year on campus (playing in just one game), and while he brought a lot of unique traits to the program (which we’d see in full bloom just a few months later), it was unlikely that under Petrino he would see much time on the field.

Thankfully for us all, Petrino was fired and Scott Satterfield, a former walk-on turned star himself, was named head coach of the program. We soon would come to learn that walk-ons were an integral part of Satterfield’s plans at Louisville and within months, he awarded three players scholarships in a very cool fashion.

Ford was one of those three players, along with running back Maurice Burkley and safety Jack Fagot, all of whom had been impressive during spring practice and into the summer training program. A grand total of six walk-on players were awarded scholarships by the end of the 2020 season, and a handful of them played key roles for a Louisville football program that struggled with roster imbalance and depth issues thanks to the previous staff.

These guys weren’t just handed scholarships to feel good. All six earned it each and every day on the field and in the weight room. Ford quickly caught the staff’s eye as someone capable of filling a very unique, niche role on the offense and he did so with his willingness to leave it all on the line each and every day. Tight end coach Stu Holt said of Ford:

"“I like that he comes to work every day. It’s important to him. I think it kind of goes back… He was talking about being from Louisville and, you know, it means a lot to play here.”"

“I call those guys the glue, they are the glue of the program,” Satterfield would say later when asked about the walk-on’s, and throughout the season we saw that from Ford, amongst others. Regardless of how big or little each player’s impact was in 2019, Satterfield did something the previous coaching staff never did; acknowledge the importance of their contributions to the program on and off the field.

While Tyler Haycraft started at right tackle, no other former or current walk-on provided the instant impact Ford did, quickly becoming not only one of the top offensive threats on the team but one of the top tight ends in the entire ACC.

With his ferocious blocking, great hands, as well as his speed, Ford went from an unknown to a huge part of the Cardinal offensive success in year one and it happened in a blink of an eye.

In the season opener, we quickly saw Ford’s potential as a pass-catcher and blocker out of the backfield as he put together quite a performance against Notre Dame, catching two passes for 43 yards – including a 37-yard catch and run in the first half. He followed that up a week later cathing three more passes for 26 yards and his first-ever multi-score game with two touchdowns.

That type of play went on throughout the majority of the season, while in some games he dominated as an edge blocker for Tutu Atwell and Javian Hawkins, while in others he was a primary target for Micale Cunningham and the Louisville offense.

Ford became a bit of an internet sensation throughout the year amongst Louisville fans, thanks to highlight-worthy blocking like what we see in the video below against Virginia (this is a Tutu Atwell highlight video but if you watch closely, you’ll EASILY see the blocking he receives in the jet sweep passes from Ford).

His 20 receptions, 292 yards, and seven touchdown season was one that any redshirt freshman would be proud of, especially one who was in just his first season a scholarship player. Ford finished the year third on the team in receptions, fourth in receiving yards, and second in touchdowns. From an ACC perspective, Ford was easily one of the league’s top tight ends, finishing the year with the most touchdown’s caught by a tight end, while emerging into what I believe may be a potential NFL caliber player.

On a video conference with local media, Dwayne Ledford went out of his way to praise Ford, saying:

"“Ford is such a great athlete and has the best attitude I have ever been around. Ask him to do anything, he is going to do it as hard as he can do it. “He is extremely athletic and he can catch the football. I always tell our guys, he could do whatever he wants, when the ball in his hands he can do a lot of things.”"

As the Louisville football filled out their roster with the available scholarships they had, they also kept nearly as close of an eye on potential preferred walk-on talent from around the Louisville area, across the state of Kentucky, and even into Illinois, Ohio, and Tennessee. After signing day Satterfield made it clear how he and his staff felt about the talent they evaluated around the state and why he felt they should play at Louisville, he said:

"“It doesn’t matter if you’re scholarship or walk on in this program, you are going to have an opportunity to play. We are going to get some more guys that are going to be in the mix from local high schools. I think our walk-on program is going to be what’s really exciting with all of the local talent we have here.”"

The message to the large group of players the coaching staff identified; look at what Marshon Ford did. That can be you with hard work, buying in, and giving the program everything you have.

We’ve heard this story plenty of times. Player receives no to little attention as a high school recruit, only to walk-on at a program and rise from the bottom of the totem pole to the top, only to develop into a star and eventually go on to be drafted. But what we haven’t heard or seen is a program consistently do that and make it a staple of their recruiting and roster strategy.

Thanks to the success of Ford and others like Fagot, Isaac Martin, Danya Kinnaird, Maurice Burkley, Ramon Puryear, and a handful of other players who got a chance to prove themselves, ultimately earning starting and contributing roles, the staff can be the program that attracts players who may be flying under the radar or not yet fully developed and turn them into contributing pieces and maybe even stars.

Everything that the staff has done to cultivate an interest in joining the Cardinal program as a walk-on has worked as Satterfield and his staff has landed commitments from over 20-plus players thus far, and there could be even more.

The names that appear on the roster may not be familar to you or come with the same notoriety as the three and four-star recruits the staff have signed into the program but don’t discount them. Each guy who wears the red and black will be judged on one thing, and it won’t be their scholarship status.

Instead, these players will come into the program with no promises or guarantees about what their future looks like but one thing is for certain; each player will have every opportunity to prove he is the next Marshon Ford.