Page 3 - 2018 Arkansas Football

Sunday, August 26, 2018
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
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“I actually checked an audible and coach
didn’t care for it too much,” Morris said. “It was me and my best friend. He was the left guard, and we just did a little check, see if I couldn’t do a little option pitch. Pitch to the guard coming around. It didn’t work out too well.
“All I know is I was told I was needed on the sidelines. So that’s where I spent the rest of the day. But it was good. That was fun. We laugh about it now.”
Morris has come many miles since the sandlot trick plays.
His offensive stylings — a hurry-up Spread attack, most often without a hud- dle, that leans on zone read principles to get the ball into open spaces — have helped him traverse from the start of a dynasty at Lake Travis (Texas) High School into the pressure cooker of the SEC West in the span of nine years.
“I feel like he’s just always wanted to push the envelope,” said Hank Carter, a for- mer Morris player who eventually became his defensive coordinator and succeeded him as head coach at powerhouse Lake Travis. “He’s going to do things that are going to create mismatches and going to create some frantic defensive coordinators, because he likes to play fast.”
A growing legend during his 16-year prep head coaching career that netted three state championships and a sparkling 169-38 record, Morris shot up the ranks in college. After making the jump to Tulsa as offen- sive coordinator in 2010 for Todd Graham, Morris started racking up big offensive numbers as coordinator at Clemson for four years, followed by the head coaching job at SMU in 2015.
Only one other prominent coach has a career arc that resembles Morris’ path, and he has strong connections to both Arkansas and Morris.
Gus Malzahn, a Fort Smith native and former Arkansas offensive coordinator, won three high school state championships in Arkansas and also made a stop at Tulsa before coordinating the offense for BCS champion Auburn in 2010. He then started his head coaching career at Arkansas State University in 2012.
Morris studied the hurry-up offense un- der Malzahn in Springdale. They became fast friends.
“I would consider Gus one of my very close friends,” Morris said at his introduc- tory news conference Dec. 7. “He and I text regularly. We share ideas regularly. Very innovative. We think a lot alike in those regards.”
Malzahn was the top choice of Arkansas officials to succeed Bret Bielema in Decem- ber before he agreed to a raise and contract extension to stay at Auburn. He and Morris will meet for the first time as head coaches Sept. 22 in Auburn, Ala.
THE BEGINNINGS
Morris was fresh off earning his math degree, with a minor in statistics, when he landed his first job at Class 3A Eustace
as a math teacher and assistant coach in basketball, football and baseball in 1992.
Eustace Superintendent Gene Bethea, the former football coach and athletic di- rector at the school, hired the 23-year-old Morris in a hurry.
“I interviewed Chad, and I knew instant- ly I wanted to hire him for two reasons: No. 1 is he came across just exactly like Jack Shellnutt had told me he would, just a good ol’ East Texas boy is the best way you could say it,” Bethea said. “But he al- so taught mathematics, and he had good grades from Texas A&M, which is not an easy task. I needed a math teacher as well as a coach. I hired him right on the spot.
“I didn’t know he was going to be that good at the time, but after two seasons, I promoted him to be head football coach.”
Morris was the head basketball coach after his first year at Eustace, then added head football coaching duties, bumping his salary from about $22,000 to $33,000.
Morris, who had married his school- teacher wife Paula early in his time at Eustace, had a couple of other careers in mind. He took three tests in preparation for becoming an actuary and also took exams to work in the fire departments in Dallas and Irving.
“Coaching was not the path he was tak- ing,” Paula Morris told the Dallas Morn- ing News in 2015. “I joke with him and tell him, ‘I never would have married you if I thought you’d be a coach.’ ”
Yet the challenge of leading young men, and the infinite possibilities of putting numbers and angles and spatial relation- ships into play on that 300-by-160 foot grass field, kept Morris fired up for football.
“We were sitting in an old junior high office, and Chad said, ‘I want to be a head coach in college,’ ” Jeff Brown, an assistant coach at Eustace, told the Dallas Morning News in 2015. “That was a long way off.
“He wasn’t afraid to do things different- ly. He was never the unapproachable Bear Bryant type so many high school coaches think they have to be. He could be intense. But he could connect.”
Morris, already a respected play design- er in his early 20s, took a playbook as thick as a brick into his first summer as a head coach.
“When I first got into high school coach- ing, I thought I was going to run anywhere from the Wishbone to the Single Wing to the Shotgun to the Spread,” Morris said. “I was going to be the guy that runs it all."
See MORRIS, Page 7K
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5K Arkansas preview
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11K Can't-miss games in the SEC
14K College football FAQ
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17K Arkansas opponent capsules 18K Arkansas opponent capsules 19K Razorbacks FAQ
20K Arkansas State preview
21K Central Arkansas preview
22K Arkansas-Pine Bluff preview
23K Great American Conference preview
SPORTS EDITOR Wally Hall ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR Jason
Yates
SECTION DESIGNER Steve Rogers
COPY EDITORS Jason Yates, Frank- ie Frisco, Steve Rogers
COVER DESIGN Kirk Montgomery