Posted this in the Poll thread where it is likely to be buried:
Many people don't seem to know who Chad Morris is or what he is about. I spent the last few years living about 45 minutes outside of Clemson, SC and may be able to provide some additional insight from being around so many Clemson fans.
When Dabo was hired at Clemson, he got off to a very slow start, and was on the verge of being run out of town. In order to be successful, Clemson needed a complete turnaround on the offensive side of the ball. The 2010 Tiger offense was ranked ~90th in the country offensively.
Dabo turned to Chad Morris, who was then the OC at Tulsa after coaching HS football at a very high level in TX for several years. With Morris leading the O, the 2011 Clemson team ended up with the 20th best Offense in the country. The 2013 team was 9th in total offense. In his final year Morris, landed a commitment from Deshaun Watson before heading to take over a 1-11 SMU squad. Clemson's Offense after his departure is still largely the same one he installed while he was the OC. Rather than replace him with another hot OC, they opted to promote from within and keep the Offense basically the same.
At SMU, he walked into a real dumpster fire. June Jones had quit mid-season the previous year after several years of really weak recruiting. The 2014 SMU team was statistically at or very near the bottom of the charts for every category that matters.
Since taking over at SMU, Morris has driven a culture change similar to what Dabo did at Clemson and also turned the results around on the field. His team's results are rapdily trending up.
2014, the year prior to his arrival, SMU was literally one of the worst teams in the country (ranked 37 spots below where UT is currently located in the FPI). The 2014 team had an average point differential of -30.3 and managed a whopping 3228 yards of offense and 133 points for the entire season. (UT had 3493 yards and 238 points this year for reference)
Since Morris arrived at SMU, the team has been trending up drastically:
The SMU offense has gone from
269 yards/gm in 2014
to 494 yards/gm this year.
The scoring is up from
11.1 points/gm to 40.2 points/gm. As a result, the average point differential went from a -30 to a +5.
The team is also up from
1 win to 7 (heading for 8 with a bowl win this year)
The FPI ranking for the team is up from
127th to 67th (UT is 90th currently).
And the FPI Offensive Ranking is up from
119th to 21st.
He has managed all of this with the nearly empty roster left by June Jones when he bailed on SMU mid-season.
All 5 losses they had this season were to teams who are playing in bowl games this post-season.
He is a strong recruiter in the south with numerous contacts in the Texas area, but has proven he is able to recruit in the rest of the southeast as well.
While I don't think he is an absolute homerun hire, I think he is every bit as good as Venables from an X's and O's and Player Development standpoint. He would probably be quite a bit better than Venables as a figurehead due to his personality and demeanor as well.
His biggest issue from what I can see is that he chose to take an opportunity to go to a struggling school to build a head coaching resume probably 1 or 2 years too soon, while Venables stayed at Clemson as the DC.
Hopefully that info helps people to understand where Morris is coming from and why he isn't just "LOL, LOSING RECORD AT SMU, DOOLEY 2.0"
Also worth adding: It is rumored that if Morris comes here, he'd bring former Vol Marion Hobby (Clemson's former co-DC along with Venables) as his DC.
