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"When he was a freshman, he came up to me and said, 'Coach, just play me, and you'll never regret it,'" said Jimmie McEnturff, the Edgewood head coach that season and a longtime Morris men- tor. "Even as a rookie in high school, he was able to read the secondary and do things that a freshman is not supposed to be able to do." David Whiting took over as head coach the season after Morris earned solid playing time as a freshman. "Just to be real honest, Chad was a very scrawny looking kid who wanted to play football," Whiting said. "I went to the other coaches who … I inherited on the staff, and they felt Chad would be a good one to go with, and I took their advice, and it turned out to be good advice." Whiting said Morris had a special skill for studying defenses and "using his brain to help outwit them to try to beat them physically and otherwise. "He was always an innovator. He was always out after practice, he and some of the other guys, running their own plays." Experimentation outside of Whiting's Power I playbook came with risks and rewards. "Oh yeah, he got in trouble a couple of times for that," recalled Jack Shell- nutt, then a math teacher and assistant coach at Edgewood who helped ignite Morris' pursuit of math and coaching. "I remember one time we were playing a team that beat us pretty soundly, and we didn't have anything going offensively. He called an audible to a pass play, and it was the best play we had all night. He got in trouble for it, too." Morris recalled another play he and his buddy Chris Mattingly came up with on their own and decided to run for real. "I actually checked an audible, and coach didn't care for it too much," Mor- ris 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 former Morris player who eventual- ly 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 spar- kling 169-38 record, Morris shot up the ranks in college. After making the jump to Tulsa as offensive coordinator in 2010 for Todd Graham, Morris started racking up big offensive numbers as of- fensive 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 champion- ships 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 under Malzahn in Springdale. They be- came fast friends. "I would consider Gus one of my very close friends," Morris said at his introductory 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 Ar- kansas officials to succeed Bret Biele- ma in December 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, located about 65 miles east of Dallas, as a math teacher and assistant coach in basketball, football and baseball in 1992. Eustace school Superintendent Gene Bethea, the former football coach and athletic director at the school, hired the 23-year-old Morris in a hurry. "I interviewed Chad, and I knew in- stantly I wanted to hire him for two rea- sons: 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 also taught mathematics, and he had good grades from Texas A&M, which is not an easy task. I needed a math teach- er 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 sea- sons, I promoted him to be head football coach." 10 Arkansas Football Sunday, August 26, 2018 Morris' coaching record HIGH SCHOOL CAREER Eustace* ...........................................1994-97* Elysian Fields .................................... 1998-99 Bay City .........................................2000-2002 Stephenville ...................................2003-2007 Lake Travis ....................................2008-2009 * — Also coached boys basketball team to 128-32 record in four seasons. COLLEGE CAREER Tulsa (OC) ...............................................2010 Clemson(OC) ................................. 2011-2014 SMU (HC).......................................2015-2017 RECORD AT SMU Year Record 2015 ......................................................... 2-10 2016 ........................................................... 5-7 2017 ............................................................7-5 Morris v Continued from Page 8 American-Statesman File Photo/RICARDO B. BRAZZIELL Lake Travis Cavaliers' Jon-Michael Paul dumps ice water on Head Coach Chad Morris on Dec. 20, 2008, after beating the Longview Lobos 48-23. v Continued on next page