Chad Morris speaks for the first time publicly since his firing at Arkansas, hire at Auburn
By Andrew Olson
Published:
On Thursday, Chad Morris made held his first public media opportunity since being fired at Arkansas. The new Auburn offensive coordinator talked with reporters on The Plains, including Josh Vitale of the Montgomery Advertiser, discussing how he landed the AU offensive coordinator position and more.
“Yeah you have no idea how strange that is,” Morris said of landing at Auburn, his former SEC West rival.
After offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham left for Florida State to reunite with former Memphis coach Mike Norvell, Malzahn turned to one of his friends in the coaching business.
“We’ve always talked about it, for years. You know, I’ve known Coach since early, early 2000’s” Morris said.
It took nearly two decades for Morris and Malzahn to link up in the college ranks. Now Malzahn is trusting Morris to coordinate (play-calling hasn’t been decided yet…) an offense led by Auburn legacy Bo Nix. Morris shared some of his early impressions on Nix, a true freshman QB looking to end Year 1 with an Outback Bowl win over Minnesota.
“When you look at Bo, he’s a winner. That’s all he knows,” Morris said. “Being able to observe him on the other side of the field this year and watching his skill set and watching him develop this year from Game 1 to when we played him (Oct. 19 at Arkansas), you just saw progress each week. Now being here just the short five days that I’ve been around, he can’t get enough film work with me, he can’t come in the office enough. He’s picking my brain and wanting to know what I see. That’s exciting, because you know you have a quarterback that wants to be elite and is going to do what it takes to be elite.”
As you can see in one of the brief clips from the press conference which were shared on Twitter by Kyle Deckelbaum of KATV, Morris prides his quarterbacks on being “winners” on and off the field:
Chad Morris spoke to the media for the first time as Auburn’s offensive coordinator. He said he went through “a range of ups and downs” over the last few weeks.
When asked about quarterbacks he’s coached, he said there’s one thing that stands out: “They’re winners.” pic.twitter.com/r9ScRBzFfR
— Kyle Deckelbaum (@KATVKyle) December 19, 2019
More from Morris, including the history of his friendship with Malzahn, can be found in Vitale’s full article here.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
