re: Aggie Chad

Vegas will have SMU as underdogs against Memphis and Central Florida. I'm interested in seeing how he approaches opponents with significant talent advantages.

Haven't followed Navy this year, but that one will also be a big challenge for him. The Midshipmen are usually pretty tough.

I don't really have a firm threshold of wins he has to meet to warrant consideration. Obviously, the more the better, though.

Is he playing the best hand he's got, getting more out of them than he should on paper? Does SMU look like they are well prepared with a gameplan that they can execute? Not many penalties or blown assignments?

Memphis has a better roster this year. What's his plan in a game like that?

Oddly enough, a CUSA coordinator might be the best hire he made here.

I've seen smu vs Memphis anywhere from -3 to +3, but idk if it was legit.

quote:

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My thing with Morris is to give him a massive assistant coaches salary pool. I want him to be able to pay $1mil+ for coordinators and have a few very highly paid position guys. Even if he only gets paid $4 mil or so.

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Fully agree with this. I think LSU is doing it the right way w/O having a smaller deal while the coordinators have deals comparable to what they might get as HCs in smaller conferences.

Morris on recruiting at SMU:

"I've recruited all over the country, but our footprint is the state of Texas and we're going to be really cautious before we cross over. If I can find the same caliber player in our state then that's the default. We're going to get that first."

Also: "We're not going to come in and out-recruit somebody. But we're going to come in and out-evaluate somebody and so we as a staff have to do a phenomenal job of evaluating talent to see where it fits and maybe where we are in building our program."

LINK

Morris nearly got out of coaching for a different career in the FBI or DEA. So I guess we can infer that he is a Law and Order kind of guy.
Morris the G-Man

I don't think the defensive problems at SMU can necessarily be traced back to Morris/Malone not knowing how to coach defense.

It seems like it had more to do with injuries and attrition in the front 7 (at least in 2016) which resulted in their defense getting worse as the season went on. They were pretty much forced into playing a lot of guys, just out of necessity.

LINK

There will be several jobs in Power 5 conferences open: Florida, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Nebraska. And a few more are likely, including A&M.

Plausible candidates to fill these jobs are Frost, Norvell, Morris, Campbell. Who else is out there? Maybe Kelly decides to get back into coaching.

There are going to be high profile schools approaching Morris, just because of the scarcity of available options.

I don't think we can just assume Morris might cement his rebuild job at SMU with more good seasons, and then still be at SMU at a later date for our choosing.

We are not the only school closely watching how he finishes up this season.

matt campbell should be our target, though he has a 10mil or so buyout.

I'm not worried about losing a top target to another opening. Our only struggles will be prying away from a current job.

If we wanted Campbell, we'd have him.