Facts to Know as Clemson Welcomes Back Chad Morris at Offensive Coordinator

Clemson will have a new-look offense next season, letting go of Garrett Riley and bringing in Chad Morris to be the Tigers’ next offensive coordinator.

It means that head coach Dabo Swinney will be welcoming in new pieces to the group as well, losing senior leaders like Cade Klubnik, Adam Randall and Antonio Williams on that side of the ball. However, he’s bringing back a coordinator that worked with him from 2011-14 in the same role.

Morris was the frontrunner the entire way through, and it seems like Swinney knew what he wanted from the get-go after parting ways with Riley.

Here is everything you need to know regarding Morris’s rendezvous with the Tigers going into next season.

When Morris Ran The Offense, It Soared

One of the bigger takeaways from the hire is that Clemson is going back to the basics, and that is bringing back somebody that knew how to run the offense when the Tigers began to contend in the 2010s.

His offense averaged 468.5 yards per game and 36.3 points per contest over his four seasons as Clemson’s playcaller. That is ranked ninth and 12th, respectively, in the country over that 52-game span. Morris’s offense opened up both the pass and the run, exceeding both 15,000 yards through the air and 8,000 on the ground.

That brings optimism for skill position players like T.J. Moore and Bryant Wesco Jr. It raises the upside for players like Gideon Davidson and Naeem Burroughs as well. The Tigers will also look to get more production out of the run game as well, which was outside the top 100 in yards per carry last season.

Clemson has legends like Tajh Boyd, Sammy Watkins and DeAndre Hopkins because of the way Morris ran the show. Could that be similar 15 years later?

Morris Took Last Season Off as a Coach, But Still Followed Football Closely

Virginia quarterback Chandler Morris is his son, and being in his last season in college football, Morris took the year off after serving as the pass game coordinator and wide receivers coach at Texas State in 2024.

He also had another role that he took on over the course of this past season: working with ANSRS. It’s a data analytic group that had Morris visit campuses around the country, checking out how things are run. He said that it was “really beneficial” to see other models run to bring into his second tenure.

“I had a chance this past year to really get out and see the way other programs are run, things both good and bad, and that was really beneficial for me,” Morris said last Friday. “So I want to thank all the coaches and staff that allowed me to sit in their meeting rooms and go to their practices.”

Going to places like the Big 12 and Mountain West allowed him to figure out how he wants to approach coaching Clemson’s offense, and he brings plenty of new experience from the past season. Since Virginia also has a former Clemson offensive coordinator at the helm, Tony Elliott, Morris worked with him over the 2025 season in bits and pieces.

Clemson’s Offense Has Some Explosive Plans

Morris spoke a little bit about the Clemson offense next season, and it already sounds like a complete 180 from what occurred last season.

“We’re a two-back run-oriented play-action shot football team that’s going to take great pride in pushing the ball down the field,” he said.

Expect two to three deep shots per quarter. Morris wants the ball traveling 25 yards or more three or four times a game. He also wants to play fast while not trying to “compliment this thing.”

“Chart it, let’s figure it out, why it ain’t happening, and get the ball to our playmakers,” he added.

Expect both 11 and 12 personnel, most likely to “change the pace” of how the offense looks at times. He will have the personnel to due it, with all of the key returners and transfer pickup of Chris Johnson Jr. from SMU to add some speed.

The Tigers face LSU in Week 1 to showcase Morris’s offense for the first time next season. The ability to hit on those deep shots he talked about will be examined thoroughly.

Previous Coaching Stops

Morris has been to a lot of different places since he left Clemson after the 2014 season. He took the head coaching job at SMU and was there until 2017, before taking a job with Arkansas as the Razorbacks’ head coach.

Things didn’t go well in Fayetteville for him, going 4-18 across two seasons and being dismissed after the 2019 season. That is the worst record by a Razorbacks’ head coach that wasn’t an interim hire.

He then went to Auburn to be its playcaller for a season, but was not retained after Gus Malzahn was fired. He spent time at South Florida and Clemson from 2022-23 as an offensive analyst before going to Texas State in his last coaching stint.

There are a lot of questions involving the hire, especially if Morris will adjust after 10+ years of not being the team’s playcaller. However, if it has happened before under Swinney, it has the capability to do so once again.