Auburn offensive coordinator Chad Morris speaks with quarterback Bo Nix during Auburn football practice on Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2019 in Auburn, Ala.
Todd Van Emst/AU AthleticsTodd Van Emst/AU Athletics
One of Chad Morris’ first steps when he was named Auburn’s offensive coordinator last December was to sit down with true freshman Bo Nix and ask him one simple yet pertinent question. Morris knew what the answer was going to be before he even asked the question, but he needed to hear Nix’s response anyway.
“Do you want to be good, or do you want to be great?” Morris asked. Nix, naturally, said he wanted to be great — but he didn’t stop there.
“He says he wants to be the best that’s ever played,” Morris recalled. “I say, ‘OK, it’s going to take a lot of work. I’m going to remind you this in many days when I’m chewing on you pretty good.”
Nix, to this point, has been up for the challenge, and there may be few men better equipped to get him to that apex than Morris. The veteran coach has established a lengthy track record of developing successful and highly productive quarterbacks at nearly every stop in his career — from coaching high school in Texas, to serving as offensive coordinator at Tulsa a decade ago and Clemson right after, to his time as head coach at SMU from 2015-17. Outside of a disastrous stint at Arkansas, Morris has been able to put his imprint on the offense everywhere he’s been. He earned a reputation as a QB guru after churning out some of the best quarterbacks to ever play for each of those schools.
“He’s very innovative,” former Lake Travis High quarterback Garrett Gilbert told AL.com. “His offense is always evolving…. The flexibility there as well as the lack of ego was probably where it starts, and then secondly, he’s just — he understands the position and what it’s like to be a quarterback. He puts his quarterbacks in great positions to have success with his play-calling and really just his demeanor.”
Gilbert, currently on the Cleveland Browns’ practice squad, played for Morris for just one season — during his senior year at Lake Travis in 2008—and became one of Morris’ earliest success stories at quarterback. The former five-star prospect was already a record-setting quarterback before Morris took over at Lake Travis, but he elevated his game under Morris’ guidance while leading the school to a 16-0 mark and a second straight state championship.
That season, Gilbert passed for 4,851 yards — breaking the state record he set a year earlier — and 55 touchdowns while finishing his career as the state’s all-time leader in passing yards, at the time, and second in career touchdowns and completions. He accomplished all of that despite having to pick up Morris’ offense in a single offseason while being physically limited to a shoulder procedure that sidelined him for five months.
“He just, again, obviously things have evolved since his high school-level offense, but it’s not — I don’t want to say it’s too simple or simple necessarily, but it’s very player-friendly,” said Gilbert, who also spent time as a graduate assistant under Morris at SMU. “It’s a very user-friendly offense. It’s got tons and tons of wrinkles, but they all make sense within the scheme, and it’s very easy to pick up because of the way he teaches it and because of the way he calls plays.”
Morris’ offense stems from the same system Gus Malzahn rode to prominence from his days as a high school coach in Arkansas to Auburn. The two have been long-time friends, with their relationship taking root in the early 2000s when Morris sought out Malzahn’s help to innovate his offense.
Since then, Morris’ offense has evolved, though it remains from the same tree as Malzahn’s Hurry Up No Huddle scheme. Morris’ offense has been more pass-heavy, and over the last decade he has further emphasized the tight end—a position he believes let’s you play faster and create more mismatches—and running backs in the passing game. Gilbert said Morris has always done a good job giving his quarterbacks full-progression reads that make decision-making easier.
“The offense is built around the quarterback being successful and being able to get the ball out of his hands in a hurry,” said Ben Hicks, who played quarterback for Morris at SMU and then Arkansas. “At times, it looks like the offense is solely built around on taking shots, but a lot of the stuff is built around trying to get the ball out of your hand. For a quarterback, that’s the biggest thing — trying to get the ball out of your hand quick and dink and dunk down the field, and when they finally do give you the opportunity to hit them deep, you just got to make them pay, and that’s what the offense is really built around.”
Chad Morris’ offense is based on the same philosophies as Gus Malzahn’s, but Auburn’s first-year offensive coordinator is bringing his own flavor to the table to reshape the Tigers’ offense this season.
Hicks, a former three-star quarterback out of Waco, Texas, spent three years playing for Morris at SMU, where he became the Mustangs’ all-time leader in passing yards (9,081), passing touchdowns (71), completions (718) and 300-yard passing games (12). After redshirting in 2015 as a true freshman, Hicks was thrust into the starting role in 2016 after a season-ending injury to starter Matt Davis in the opener against North Texas.
Hicks threw an 88-yard touchdown on his first career completion and went on to throw for 2,930 yards and 19 touchdowns while completing 55.5 percent of his passes. The following season, he put together one of the most prolific passing performances in school history while throwing for 3,569 yards and 33 touchdowns before his production took a step back in 2018 following Morris’ departure for Arkansas.
Like Gilbert eight years earlier and many of the quarterbacks before Hicks, though, his first season at the helm of the offense yielded the most notable jump in production.
“He’s just a great teacher,” Malzahn said. “He’s just super smart with preparing his quarterbacks. That’s what always stood out to me about Chad. He’s just a great teacher. But the preparation he does for games with his quarterbacks is just as good as it gets. I think that’s really his strength.”
In 2010 at Tulsa, when Morris took over as offensive coordinator, quarterback G.J. Kinne put together the third-best passing season in school history, throwing for 3,650 yards and 31 touchdowns with a 60 percent completion rate. It was a considerable jump from the previous season, before Morris arrived, when Kinne threw for 2,732 yards and 22 touchdowns.
As Clemson’s offensive coordinator the following season, Tajh Boyd emerged as one of the nation’s top quarterbacks under Morris, throwing for 3,828 yards and 33 touchdowns while leading the Tigers to an ACC championship. In each of his three years under Morris, Boyd completed at least 60 percent of his passes for at least 3,800 yards and no fewer than 33 touchdowns. Then in 2014, Deshaun Watson — an eventual two-time Heisman finalist and current Houston Texans starting quarterback — completed 68 percent of his passes for 1,466 yards and 14 touchdowns over eight games in an injury-riddled season that also saw Cole Stoudt complete 63 percent of his passes for 1,892 yards.
“He understands the position of quarterback,” Gilbert said. “He understands how to put us in the position to have success. You mention that group of guys, and some of them played for him as a freshman, and I think a lot of the other guys all had success in their first season because he understood how to put his quarterback in position to be successful as a play-caller and as a coach during the course of the week. He understood how now to overcomplicate the game of football.”
That has been one of the biggest things Morris cited when asked about his work with quarterbacks over his career—the ability to simplify things for the players tasked with leading his offense, starting with footwork and then working up through everything else.
“Everything we talk about generates with our feet and moves up our body and out our arms as that ball is released,” Morris said. “So, we’re really talking about the base and building a great foundation. And then understanding and being able to read the coverages like we want. Giving them the options of where to go with the football. I think that’s been a big part of it, and another part of it has been just being able to be open and transparent with our quarterback position. Listen to those guys and what do they see and what can they execute.”
Even a dozen years later, that’s one of the things that resonates most with Gilbert from his time playing for Morris at Lake Travis. He remembers Morris arriving that offseason and, before installing his own system, asking players what they liked most about their offense from the year prior and immediately implementing those aspects to his scheme.
As Gilbert put it, Morris’ approach was all about making his quarterback comfortable. That helped them play to their strengths and, as a result, helped Morris improve and evolve as a coach. Gilbert saw that evolution from Morris while serving as an SMU graduate assistant where Hicks emerged as the starter.
“It’s just his ability to allow guys to do what they’re good at,” Hicks said. “I couldn’t do what Deshaun Watson could do, and couldn’t do what Garrett Gilbert could do, but I think when we were most successful at SMU in 2017 was when he allowed me to play to my strengths, and that was the biggest thing for me…. I think his ability to call plays to the strength of his quarterbacks and the strength of his offense is something that makes his quarterbacks extremely successful.”
With all of Morris’ most prodigious quarterbacks — from Gilbert to Kinne and Boyd to Hicks — there has been one underlying trait that the offensive-minded coach believes has been the connective thread to their success throughout his career: the ability to slow the game down and process things in real time.
It’s something Morris challenged Nix with this offseason. In breaking down Nix’s 2019 campaign, when he was the SEC Freshman of the Year but oscillated between being very good and very much looking like a true freshman, Morris noticed that things slowed down more for the former five-star quarterback late in the season as he made better decisions and fewer mistakes. He wants to see that continue going into Nix’s sophomore season and believes it can be the key to unlocking the quarterback’s full potential.
“Bo is like a coach on the field,” Morris said. “When things break down, Bo is usually really good when those things happen. He’s able to make plays with his feet. So, I’ve been pleased with him. We’ve got a long way to go.”
Those who have played the position for Morris believe Nix will be the next quarterback to benefit from his tutelage. Boyd tweeted in January he thinks Nix will throw for 3,800 yards and 35 touchdowns — both which would be single-season Auburn records — this year. Gilbert is certain that Morris will be able to build up Nix’s confidence and get him into a good rhythm early in games.
“If Bo’s willing to learn from Coach Morris’ past quarterbacks — from their experiences and study the tape — you know, Coach Morris will put him in a situation to be successful,” Hicks said. “I think we know how talented Bo is, and I’m sure Coach Morris will put him in a great situation. I know he’ll take the offense and run with it, so I think them two together could be a great opportunity for Auburn.”
Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.
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