TSSAA football: Highlights from Tennessee Titans’ Nike 7-on-7 tournament
The Tennessee Titans held the Nike 11-on passing tournament for TSSAA football teams from the Nashville area. See the best video highlights.
Freshman quarterback Kam Morton led Oakland to the Tennessee Titans Nike 11-ON passing tournament title against Pearl-Cohn.Morton is competing for the starting position, a rare opportunity for a freshman under coach Kevin Creasy.
Oakland freshman quarterback Kam Morton made a couple of wrong reads and caught the wrath of Patriots coach Kevin Creasy.
Morton chalked it up to another learning lesson.
“Adversity is OK,” he said. “It’s just a challenge on the way to a better destination.”
Morton’s performance at the Tennessee Titans Nike 11-ON passing tournament on July 9 was more about the things he did correctly. His three touchdown passes in the championship led Oakland to a 20-13 win over Pearl-Cohn at Ascension Saint Thomas Park, and his play throughout the tournament caught other teams’ attention.
Morton, a 5-foot-9, 167-pound transfer from Ensworth, has a chance to do something rare: become the first freshman starting quarterback under Creasy in his 17 TSSAA football seasons as a head coach.
The odds don’t favor that happening. Creasy has had just one freshman starter — at any position. That was running back Kenyan Harper at Trousdale County in 2011. But Morton, Oakland senior Patrick Freeman and junior Donte Cameron are all in the mix to start in 2025, Creasy said.
Freeman, a star pitcher who has been playing travel baseball, hasn’t been with Oakland this summer. Cameron, who led Oakland to a 7-on-7 title at Lebanon the previous day, filled in at receiver for the Titans tournament due to injuries at that spot.
That left Morton with an open audition.
“It was great today. Everybody was supporting me, so I felt like I had to give it back with some good football,” Morton said. “The experience has been crazy, to be honest. It’s so much different from middle school, but every day I can get better. That will be my goal from now on.”
Creasy joked that Morton “is about 12.” Truth is, he isn’t much older than that at 15. That’s why the repetitions this week were so important, and he made the most of them.
Morton helped Oakland defeat Blackman and Page in the single-elimination bracket on the way to the finals. In one sequence against Page, he read the right half of the field, then turned to his left and laced a pass into the back corner of the end zone for a score.
“Kam, to be as young as he is, he made some tremendous plays,” Creasy said. “Once the playoffs started and it was win-or-go-home, things got cranked up a little bit, the stakes got a little higher, the pressure increased, and that’s what he needs to experience. We played three good defenses in a row and he made some plays. He made some mistakes, but to Kam’s credit, he’s a young guy that’s kind of like a blank slate. He’s learning everything about what we do, how we do it. He’s been like a sponge so far, so we’re trying to give him all we can. He’s got a lot of God-given talent.”
Tyler Palmateer covers high school sports for The Tennessean. Have a story idea for him? Reach Tyler at tpalmateer@tennessean.com and on the X platform, @tpalmateer83.
He also writes The Tennessean’s high school sports newsletter, The Bootleg. Subscribe to the newsletter here.