Chad Morris’ offense is a better fit for Bret Bielema’s roster than you might think

Chad Morris started to become a prominent figure in football when he took over at now-famous Lake Travis High School in Austin, Texas. He went 32-0 with a pair of state titles, averaging 48 points per game with two different QBs, first senior Garrett Gilbert (five-star Texas recruit, transferred to SMU) and then junior Michael Brewer (three-star Texas Tech recruit, transferred to Virginia Tech).

Before that, he’d faced the tall expectations at Stephenville High, thanks in part to up-and-coming Arkansas high school coach named Gus Malzahn, who helped Morris craft his own hurry-up, no-huddle spread offense.

The success of that system at Lake Travis led to Morris’ hire at Tulsa as an OC, and a 10-3 season there propelled him to Clemson, where he helped mold the Dabo Swinney juggernaut. Morris left just before the big breakthrough with Deshaun Watson, after recruiting him to Clemson and helping him through his freshman year.

Some folks lump it in with air raid offenses because he’s from Texas, and others conceive it as a system designed around dual-threat QBs because of his time at Clemson. From either perspective, Morris’ style would seem to be a tough fit with an Arkansas roster trained by Bret Bielema to get under center and power through with a “pro-style” approach.

But neither is true.

Every spread offense tends to put a lot on the QB, both in the volume of plays they are involved in and their workload in the run game. Getting the right numbers to run the ball often means using the option, while spreading the skill players across the field means a scramble is as likely as a quick toss to the RB to be the check-down option.

Morris’ use of the QB as a runner has tended to be par for the course, with a good runner like Matt Davis getting more action than a pocket-oriented player like Ben Hicks.

This offense tends to put a much greater emphasis on the run game than the air raid systems it’s confused with — Morris’ SMU ranked as high as No. 37 in rushes per game — yet this isn’t like the Malzahn offenses, in which the QB is getting 200 carries and approaching 1,000 rushing yards. Morris’ offenses really fling the ball around, and his better QBs hit explosive marks in their yards-per-attempt numbers, though SMU didn’t get all that far there.

Morris likes to note SMU had a 3,000-yard passer in Hicks, a 1,000-yard rusher in sophomore Xavier Jones, and two 1,000-yard wideouts in second-rounder Courtland Sutton and Mr. Irrelevant Trey Quinn, with James Proche just behind them at 816. Nearly every play, SMU ran to one of those four skill players, which is the best clue as to how this offense works.

Morris’ offenses want to run from the spread where they’re at a numbers advantage, much like anyone else, and they’ll attach pass or keeper options for their QBs on many of their runs, to ensure leverage.

But mainly, they apply tempo and throw it over people’s heads at every opportunity. Morris is safely within the “throw it deep to set up the run” paradigm, and the passing game is less of an air raid, dropback system than it is a collection of route combos.

You’d like a dual-threat QB in this style of offense, of course, to boost the run game, help mitigate the challenges of protecting the QB while he’s looking to push it down the field, and avoid a negative play when the read or toss call doesn’t work out. The much bigger priority is having a QB who knows how the offense attacks defenses, control tempo and ID defenses at a high pace, and deliver accurate balls on vertical routes.

For one thing, despite the beefy Bielema brand, his Hogs were often better at throwing than they were at running, meaning Arkansas having a misunderstood offense is nothing new.

Getting Bielema’s tall and stout linemen conditioned to hurry to the line between every snap is a concern, but Arkansas’ preferences for running downhill behind double teams, throwing off play-action, and featuring the RB are going to meld with the Morris playbook.

Morris and OL coach Dustin Fry love to execute standard downhill plays like power, counter, and inside zone, with an emphasis on connecting the double teams and allowing the run to develop as the back sets up his blockers. Their OL looked pretty comfortable in the spring game, lining up with one or two TEs joining them and running A-gap power downhill:

There, the only difference from the Bielema days are the facts that:

The fact that Arkansas has a deep TE room is a boon, since tight ends who can block and run routes make tempo all the more deadly. It’s hard enough for defenses to handle tempo before factoring in that the offense can run a downhill, power set and a spread formation from the same personnel group. Devwah Whaley and the other Arkansas RBs should find a relatively familiar fit.

Cole Kelley’s fit is probably the least understood part of the Morris’ transition.

For starters, the 2017 freshman has already showed some proficiency in spread elements, most of it while facing tough defenses. Here’s Kelley hitting a slant against Alabama (yes, it’s 38-3) off an inside zone play:

Arkansas also used Kelley some in the run game, with QB draws or downhill power runs, and he can scramble.

At 6’7, 270 with decent mobility, Kelley is a running threat simply because he’s bigger than most of the guys trying to tackle him. You can see first-round safety Minkah Fitzpatrick, No. 29, sizing him up and imagine him pondering how best to bring down such a load.

At times, he’s really hard to sack (though defenses certainly got plenty of chances), and his ability to see from the pocket and push the ball has gone fairly underrated. On one of the few occasions when Kelley had time to throw against Alabama, he delivered a nice post to Jordan Jones.

The challenge teams are going to face against Arkansas is how they’re going to hold up in the fourth quarter when they’ve been battling the Hog OL and trying to bring Kelley down while facing a fast tempo. In that moment, when a big Arkansas TE is throwing a chip block at the best pass-rusher and Jones is running downfield against the second or third best CB, how will defenses fare? Too much thought has gone into whether or not Kelley looks like Deshaun Watson and not enough into what it might be like to handle a guy the size of Ben Roethlisberger in an offense geared to throw deep.

It’s often hard to play against this style without getting drawn into a shootout, because the pace and aggressive play-calling is designed to increase the number of possessions. Morris’ goal is to be the team better positioned to land haymakers against a worn-out defense in the fourth quarter.

At Arkansas, Morris inherits starting experience all across the OL, a young QB with a fantastic skill set for this style of spread offense, a collection of versatile TEs, and the top seven receiving targets from a year ago.

The fit is good, better than most are expecting, and it wouldn’t be the first time that a struggling offense filled with coming-of-age talent was transformed into a lethal unit by a top spread coach.