Patriots coach Kevin Creasy<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\nMorton chalked it up to another learning lesson.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAdversity is OK,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a challenge on the way to a better destination.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Morton\u2019s 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\u2019 attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The odds don’t favor that happening. Creasy has had just one freshman starter \u2014 at any position. That was running back Kenyan Harper at Trousdale County in 2011.\u00a0But Morton, Oakland senior Patrick Freeman and junior Donte Cameron are all in the mix to start in 2025, Creasy said.<\/p>\n
Freeman, a star pitcher who has been playing travel baseball, hasn\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That left Morton with an open audition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was great today. Everybody was supporting me, so I felt like I had to give it back with some good football,\u201d Morton said. \u201cThe experience has been crazy, to be honest. It\u2019s so much different from middle school, but every day I can get better. That will be my goal from now on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Creasy joked that Morton \u201cis about 12.\u201d Truth is, he isn\u2019t much older than that at 15. That\u2019s why the repetitions this week were so important, and he made the most of them.<\/p>\n
Morton helped Oakland defeat Blackman and Page in the single-elimination bracket on the way to the finals.\u00a0In 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cKam, to be as young as he is, he made some tremendous plays,\u201d Creasy said. \u201cOnce 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\u2019s 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\u2019s credit, he\u2019s a young guy that\u2019s kind of like a blank slate. He\u2019s learning everything about what we do, how we do it. He\u2019s been like a sponge so far, so we\u2019re trying to give him all we can. He\u2019s got a lot of God-given talent.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
He also writes The Tennessean\u2019s high school sports newsletter, The Bootleg. Subscribe to the newsletter here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TSSAA football: Highlights from Tennessee Titans’ Nike 7-on-7 tournament The Tennessee Titans held the Nike 11-on passing tournament…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2061],"tags":[3689,247,265,682,3690,7,1149,2682,3688,88,6,15593,245,537,530,2546,9,266,678,3691,526,394,2411,527],"class_list":{"0":"post-195167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennessee-titans","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-american","10":"tag-american-football","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-enabled","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-high","15":"tag-high-school-football","16":"tag-highlights","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-nfl","19":"tag-oakland","20":"tag-overall","21":"tag-overall-positive","22":"tag-positive","23":"tag-school","24":"tag-sports","25":"tag-sports-news","26":"tag-story","27":"tag-story-highlights-ai-enabled","28":"tag-tennessee","29":"tag-tennessee-titans","30":"tag-tennesseetitans","31":"tag-titans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114826881688514418","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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