Clemson's Swinney Wise Enough to Ask Question About Chad Morris Arkansas Didn't

Nearly a decade later, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney proved he knows new Tigers offensive coordinator Chad Morris well enough to ask the one question Arkansas interim athletics director Julie Cromer Peoples didn't know needed asking — whether his wife, Paula, was on board with the job.

Morris, while talking to "2 Right Turns" podcast put out by Clemson, discussed the moment Swinney decided to make the offer, and it wasn't directly to him.

"He calls and and we go for about another hour talking about things and just just hearing his passion and what he wants and, you know, what we both want this program to be back at, and then where it was," Morris said. "And he starts talking about Paula. And he said, 'Well, is Paula on board?' And I said, 'Well, yeah, coach, but here she is. You want to talk to her? Here she is.'"

A few seconds later, Swinney is on the phone with Morris' wife trying to gauge whether she's bought in enough to take a risk on a coach who has been spent the past 10 years being famously known as a bad omen. Just for starters, he single-handedly destroyed the Arkansas program and then orchestrated Gus Malzahn's exit at Auburn after his offense had to have a 30-28 nail biting win over the Razorbacks in 2020 to squeeze out a 6-5 record following a nine-win season.

He then followed that by sinking one of the greatest high school programs in the nation at Allen High School in Texas to historic lows not seen in decades during his lone season at the helm there. Morris followed a coach who went 65-4 in a monstrous stadium built for a program that once won 57 straight during NFL quarterback Kyler Murray's high school years, by losing three games in one year, including a blowout to rival Southlake in the second round of the playoffs.

Still, Swinney knew if he was going to go out on a limb for someone as untouchable as Morris, he had to hear it directly from his wife. He had to know for sure whether this would be different than the train wreck at Arkansas.

"He gets her on the phone, and, you know, and he's on speaker, and I think Kath is in the background, and he's like, 'Well, you want to come back home?" Morris said. "And she's like, again, I kind of get emotional talking about it, because, you know. And I told her, she she was so powerful when, when we were here, and the impact she had in our players lives as well. But she made the comment, she said, 'You know Coach, I would crawl back to Clemson for you and Kathleen (Swinney's wife),' and you know, again, like I said, I get a little emotional to talk about it because that's how special this place is and has been to us and our family."

As most Razorbacks fans know, Morris' wife and son Chandler stayed back in Dallas for the duration of his head coaching stint with the Hogs. To an extent it was understandable because he was getting to play his final two seasons of high school in the final years of legendary Highland Park coach Randy Allen's career while also completing a perfect season his junior year.

However, the second Morris could get on a plane and out of Fayetteville to Dallas during the fall, he was gone. The Razorbacks were left in the dust and his wife and son were at the forefront while he did much of his Friday night scouting with Highland Park and whichever team the Scots happened to be playing.

Yes, that did allow him to put eyes on a lot of good talent, but it's not exactly the diversified wide net most would expect from an SEC coach. Had his family made the move, Chandler Morris would have had a better chance of playing for his dad at Arkansas as planned.

Morris was basically an absentee parent in regard to fully serving his role as head coach. Add in him allegedly making the players he inherited know up front he intended to replace them and that it was their lack of talent that brought on all the losses in his first year, and it was a recipe for the disaster it became.

It was an era of his coaching career Morris was careful to avoid. When talk turned to his past, SMU would come up, but then a black hole would form as if nothing of importance followed.

"When I left here in 2015 to go to SMU and then moving on from there, I was able to study the evolution of offenses and really more so the evolution of defenses and how they're catching," Morris said, skillfully sliding past the "A" word.

It's probably best Morris avoided Arkansas all together while trying to convince Clemson fans he is the man to restore the program to offensive success. In Bret Bielema's final season, a Big Ten style coach known for grinding things down averaged 373.4 yards per game while putting up 28.8 points per game during a rather difficult season that resulted in his firing before he left the field against Missouri.

Over the next two seasons, Morris and his "Left lane, hammer down!" philosophy slogged its way to 335 yards and 21.7 points per game, a significant drop in offensive production as the Hogs fell to 2-10.

The following season, Morris' offense didn't improve as the Razorbacks posted 340 yards and a paltry 21.4 points per game that was highlighted by his firing following a 45-19 beating by Western Kentucky under the leadership of Ty Storey, an in-state quarterback Morris intentionally ran off at the end of the previous season.

Storey had a huge day both running and throwing the ball as he posted nearly 300 yards of total offense and three touchdowns.

Sam Pittman, a first-year coach with not experience above being a position coach, produced at a higher rate than Morris also, and that was against a SEC-only slate. There were no tune-up games against low level Group of Five and FCS schools to pad the states.

The Hogs averaged 25.7 points per game and put up 391.5 yards per game against impossible odds. Pittman won three more SEC games in his first season, narrowly missing that fourth against Morris and Auburn, than Morris did in his two winless seasons in conference play.

Besides Morris' wife being on board, it's a good sign their son Chandler is apparently done playing football. He talked at one point in the interview about working for his former player, GJ Kinne, at Texas State.

In that story, he said instead of doing the work he should have been doing after the game, Morris was hiding out in the team bus watching his son play football on his phone despite DVR being a thing. Eventually, Kinne had to go get Morris and ask him to please do his job.

With his wife on board, perhaps Morris is ready for a resurgence. However, Chandler has thrown for 6,774 yards and 47 touchdowns over the past two seasons.

There's a chance he may get drafted in one of the late rounds. Should he get a shot at playing at some point, Swinney will have to wonder whether his offensive coordinator is sneaking away rather than focusing on the success of Clemson.

However, that's a future Swinney problem. For right now, he's already asked the right question.

Is Morris' wife on board with the program and full dedication to the job?

The answer is a clear yes, which it certainly wasn't when Arkansas made the call on an SMU coach with meh level success as a head coach in the Group of Five level.

Hogs Feed: