AUBURN | Gus Malzahn didn’t take long to replace Kenny Dillingham. Less than a day to be exact.
Malzahn has hired former Arkansas head coach Chad Morris as Auburn’s offensive coordinator, Auburn announced Tuesday. Malzahn and Morris have known each other for more than a decade since the pair were high school coaches — Malzahn in Arkansas and Morris in Texas.
“I’m super excited to have Chad Morris join our staff at Auburn. He’s a tremendous offensive mind who has had success with several top-ranked offenses during his time in the college ranks. I’ve known Chad for almost 20 years and he is a tireless worker and a perfectionist. He is a great addition to our program and I look forward to him helping Auburn win championships!”
Morris was fired from Arkansas Nov. 10, a day after a 45-19 home loss to Western Kentucky. He was 4-18 in less than two seasons with the Razorbacks. Prior to that, Morris was head coach at SMU, compiling a 14-22 record in three years including a 7-5 mark in 2017 after inheriting a program that went 1-11 in 2014.
Morris had a very successful stint as Clemson’s offensive coordinator from 2011-14. Clemson, which finished 6-7 prior to Morris’ arrival, went 41-11 over the next four seasons as Morris’ offense established 127 school records. He developed Tajh Boyd into a first-team All-ACC quarterback for two seasons, the 2012 ACC Player of the Year and the school’s all-time leader in passing yards and passing touchdowns.
"I’m very grateful for the opportunity to join Coach Malzahn’s staff at Auburn," Morris said. "I’ve known Gus since the early 2000s and consider him a dear friend and someone that helped me get into the profession at the college level. I’ve admired the success he’s had at each of his stops and look forward to adding to the success that he, his staff and the players have built. We are excited about joining the Auburn family.”
Morris recruited Deshaun Watson and coached him for one season as Watson completed 67.9 percent of his passes with 14 touchdowns and just two interceptions. Watson and Clemson went 28-2 over the next two seasons including winning the 2016 national championship.
Morris spent 21 years as a high school head coach in Texas including a five-year stint at Stephenville before breaking into college coaching as the offensive coordinator at Tulsa in 2010, two years after Malzahn served in the same role with the Golden Hurricanes.
They met in the early 2000s when Morris sought out Malzahn for advice in implementing his hurry-up, no-huddle offense that had been so successful at Shiloh Christian and Springdale.
“Chad, of course, I knew about him, he was a very successful Texas high school coach in Stephenville, Texas, where Art Briles was from. That's kind of a legendary deal,” said Malzahn prior to playing against Morris and Arkansas in 2018. “We were playing a state championship game and he called me out of the blue and asked if he could bring his staff to stand on the sideline. And was a little bit leery, but I said yeah. After the game, he said, 'Hey, can we bring the staff up and talk football?' So we did that for two days. The next year, he came back, and we just developed that relationship. I always knew he had something special about him. He's a great person. He's one of the good guys in our business. But he's one of the best coaches I've ever been around. So we just kind of developed that relationship.
“He went and didn't follow me at Tulsa, but two years later, with the guys I was familiar with, he took over, and they were top 10 in offense. You look at Clemson now and look back and when everything changed, it's when they hired Chad Morris. He got the offense going, recruited Deshaun Watson, and look at him now. He went to SMU, and it was low, low, low. He got them out of it, and he'll do the same thing there.”
