The Oklahoma State Cowboys have a brand new head coach up in Stillwater, Oklahoma and Texas Tech Red Raider football fans are going to be pretty familiar with him. Eric Morris, after the completion of North Texas’ season, will be leaving the DFW area to go north to coach the Oklahoma State Cowboys.
Morris, who played wide receiver for Mike Leach while at Texas Tech, and then also coached in a number of different brilliant offenses (including Leach’s at Washington State, Kliff Kingsbury’s at Texas Tech, and then his own at Incarnate Word and North Texas) will now be leading the Oklahoma State football program.
I’ve got a few thoughts on the hire (which is certainly a good hire for the folks up in Stillwater and also for Morris).
No. 1: the recruiting battles throughout Texas are about to get really interesting
Morris has been all over the Lone Star State, coaching in San Antonio, Lubbock, and now the DFW metroplex. There’s a ton of ground that he’s covered. And with Oklahoma State leaning so heavily into pulling talent out of Texas, there’s sure to be plenty of recruiting battles between Morris and Joey McGuire moving forward.
And that’s going to be fascinating to watch. Given the way Morris designs an offense (and how similar Mack Leftwich’s system is), I suspect there are going to be plenty of players targeted by both the Cowboys and the Red Raiders going forward.
No. 2: How long will Oklahoma State take to rebuild under Morris? Will they still be a dumpster fire for much longer?
What are we going to see from the Cowboys and Morris in the very near future? What are we going to see out of them in the long run? This is a program that has won a grand total of four games in this season and last season, but Oklahoma State was winning consistently for much of the past decade or so. This is a team that very regularly got to eight or more wins in a season under Mike Gundy.
Morris seems like a very logical sort of hire for the Cowboys given the way that he has experience rebuilding programs and getting teams turned around in a hurry. You can see that in his time with his Incarnate Word and North Texas.
Will we see Oklahoma State equip Morris with everything he needs to thrive in a hurry? He’s done so well in identifying talented athletes who fly under the radar. It’ll be fascinating to see how quickly Oklahoma State is able to return to the top grouping in the Big 12.
No. 3: Objectively, I love seeing Oklahoma State take a gamble on a young coach and giving a former Red Raider a shot
From a Texas Tech perspective, I don’t love seeing an innovative, young head coach ending up at a program that is going to strive to fill the exact same sort of niche that Texas Tech currently exists in. The Cowboys are, absolutely, going to look to recruit in similar high schools and Morris operates an offense that is similar in many ways to what Mack Leftwich operates.
But looking at this objectively, it’s cool seeing a young head coach get a shot at leading and rebuilding a prominent program. As long as the Cowboys don’t get in the way of the Red Raiders, I’m all on board with this sort of hire.