Malik Cunningham Is Embracing His Switch From Quarterback to Wide Receiver

As a mobile, Black quarterback, Malik Cunningham has long looked up to Lamar Jackson.

He followed Jackson to Louisville and took aim at his records. When it came to playing quarterback in the NFL, Cunningham (like Jackson) insisted he was capable.

For his first year in the league with the New England Patriots, Cunningham split duties between signal-caller and wide receiver. When the Ravens plucked him off the Patriots’ practice squad late in the season, multiple New England veterans tweeted their support that he should go chase his quarterback dreams somewhere else.

So, when Ravens coaches called Cunnigham a week before this year’s NFL draft and asked if he’d be willing to move to wide receiver full-time, Cunningham took a couple days to think it over.

He got back to them with three words: “I’m all in.”

“At first, I looked at it as like, ‘Dang man, I want to be a quarterback,'” Cunningham said on “The Lounge” podcast. “But at the same time, you have to do what’s best for the team and that’s how I looked at it. I was like, ‘Hey, I can make plays for the quarterbacks out there when I get the ball in space.’ So I looked at it as a plus, not as a fail.

“I believe in myself and my ability. Yeah, I can play quarterback. But that’s now what they need me to do right now. They need me to do something else. I’m the type of guy, whatever it takes for the team to win.”