Morris' play-calling started early

Newly hired University of Arkansas football coach Chad Morris speaks Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, during a press conference at the Fowler Family Baseball and Track Indoor Training Center in Fayetteville.

— Long before coach Chad Morris’ creative offense embarrassed a slew of defensive coaches, quarterback Morris duped an offensive coordinator by checking to a guard-around.

Spoiler alert, the infuriated victim was Morris’s head coach at Edgewood High School who had called a dive play.

Before alarmists fret about Arkansas’ new head coach being insubordinate, know that Morris was playing his last home game, his team was far ahead in the fourth quarter, his good friend/guard Chris Mattingly was supposed to get the ball, Morris and his teammates had worked on the play after practice for weeks, and he didn’t squawk when benched for several plays.

For inquiring minds, Morris kept the ball for about 30 yards instead of pitching to Mattingly who probably would have scored. Three decades later, they still give each other a hard time about Morris’ decision.

A first-year assistant coach at Edgewood when Morris was a sophomore, Jay Jameson says Morris was on track to be a coach when only a teenager.

“He was always working on plays like that so to see him become so good as an offensive coordinator and head coach is no surprise,” said Jameson, now athletics director at Edgewood, about an hour east of Dallas. “Chad was always coming up with offensive plays and schemes that were way ahead of anybody else ...”

Hired out of Southern Arkansas University in 1984, Jameson arrived in Edgewood — population less than 1,500 both then and now — and went to work helping with quarterbacks and running backs.

“I could tell from day one he was special,” Jameson said. “There was something different about him most kids don’t have. He had the ‘it’ factor, I call it. He was well beyond his years even back then. Most kids in high school are not totally students of the game.”

Morris was that, and more.

Watching film of Edgewood and its opponents, usually after school or on Saturdays, Morris was inquisitive.

“He asked more questions in practice than anyone, about our opponent that week, blocking schemes, what he could audible to, etc.,” Jameson said. “Even back then, he was thinking ahead.”

Mostly because of circumstances beyond his control, Morris did not play college football. Only four other head coaches at FBS schools share that unique background — Sonny Dykes, who succeeded Morris at SMU, Georgia Tech’s Paul Johnson, Duke’s David Cutcliffe and Washington State’s Mike Leach.

“It was a shame, but we ran the Power I,” Jameson said. “Most people ran the ball back then. Chad could really throw the ball. We threw it only a few times a game, but we were successful when we did. If Chad would’ve been in the spread back then … he would’ve put up tremendous numbers and been a college recruit.”

Instead, he went to Texas A&M and earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics with a minor in statistics. According to the Texas A&M website, that particular degree “provides the student with an in-depth study of both science (physics, chemistry, biology) and mathematics.”

To someone who barely passed the eight hours of science needed for a political science degree, that’s impressive.

Morris also gets a check mark for remaining true to his small-town roots. After he was hired at SMU, he stopped by Edgewood High School regularly to visit.

“Seems like so many people let success go to their head, but not Chad,” Jameson said.

A brief announcement in the local paper last fall provides additional insight. The single paragraph identified Morris as head football coach at SMU and a 1987 graduate of Edgewood who would be on campus Oct. 12 “to speak with students about growing up in a small town, his dream to coach football and how to NOT let circumstances define who you are.”

On those topics, Morris is well qualified.