Eric Morris Coaching Against Former Offensive Protégé Mack Leftwich on Saturday

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STILLWATER — Eric Morris has a lot of ties to Texas Tech, but one of his links to the current Red Raider team came away from Lubbock.

Mack Leftwich is Texas Tech’s offensive coordinator. A UTEP alum, Leftwich, in a lot of ways, got his coaching career started under Eric Morris at Incarnate Word, joining Morris’ staff as a graduate assistant in 2018. Leftwich worked his way up to being Incarnate Word’s quarterback coach the next three seasons under Morris before staying on at the program’s OC after Morris left for Washington State in 2022.

Although neither guy is all that old relative to their peers in the college coaching game, Leftwich is an early branch to Morris’ coaching tree.

Morris and Leftwich will each call plays for their respective squads when Oklahoma State takes on the Red Raiders at 8:30 p.m. Saturday in Boone Pickens Stadium.

“Wouldn’t be sitting here without him, for sure,” Leftwich said this week. “… Owe him a lot in terms of, he was really my first major influence in terms of really learning offensive football and the spread passing game and all those kinds of things and just how to look at the game differently. When I played at UTEP, we were 21 personnel, under center and running power every play, and play-action, so just kind of opened my eyes to a different style of football and really took a chance on me as a young coach. Owe him a ton.”

Leftwich is the son of Spencer Leftwich, a longtime offensive line coach who had stints at Arizona, Pitt, North Texas and UTEP. Morris said that pedigree stood out about Mack, with Morris noting he’s hired a lot of coaches’ kids. Morris also noted Leftwich’s background as a quarterback and the fact that he was always hanging around.

“The GA at the University of Incarnate Word is not a real sexy job, and so there weren’t a ton of applicants,” Morris said. “So I think first and foremost is something that he put in the effort to show he wanted to be there and he wanted to learn and do those things. Did a great job that first year as a GA, and then second year, moved him in as the quarterback coach, and I think just progressed a ton. But I think just you can tell usually pretty early with these young coaches is just the time and effort. You can see their brains start working and how they start accomplishing different tasks for you that he was going to be really good at it.”

Although Morris said the Incarnate Word GA job wasn’t a sexy position, it apparently was to Leftwich.

At the time, Leftwich was coaching at Lehman High School, which is between San Antonio (where Incarnate Word is) and Austin. Morris had hired Josh Kirkland, who was the head coach at Lehman High, to coach running backs at Incarnate Word. According to Leftwich, Morris and Kirkland were living together during the early days of Morris’ Incarnate Word tenure.

“I was over there at his house every night trying to get in front of Coach Morris and watch film with him,” Leftwich said. “Just basically beg for an opportunity. Luckily, they had a spot open up after a couple weeks of them being at Incarnate Word. I think I was just the convenient choice just because I had hung around enough times for him to give me an opportunity. But really enjoyed working with him. That was a fun four years. We did a lot of cool things and had a lot of success together.”

Once Leftwich got his foot in the door, he proved his metal. Under Morris and Leftwich, UIW won a share of the Southland in 2018 — the year Leftwich was a GA — and again in 2021 — Cam Ward’s final season with the program. When Morris left and Leftwich was promoted to OC, the Cardinals again won a share of the Southland in 2022.

GJ Kinne was Incarnate Word’s head coach in that 2022 season. Kinne got the Texas State job off that one season and took Leftwich with him. In his first year with the Bobcats, Leftwich coordinated the No. 15 offense in the nation in terms of total yardage, as Texas State averaged 457.6 yards and 36.7 points (11th nationally) a game.

Texas State was even better in 2024, finishing fifth nationally in yards (476.9) and seventh in points (36.5). That led Leftwich to getting his current gig at Texas Tech.

When the two square off Thursday, they’ll know a lot of what the other is running.

Leftwich said he watches Morris’ tape every week and has since they parted ways, looking for ideas to implement in his own offense. Leftwich said he’s seen certain plays and remembered running them in a game at Incarnate Word. But Tech’s OC also noted that they’ve each also been influenced some elsewhere since separating.

When asked if you can overanalyze going against a playcaller you’re so familiar with, Morris noted some signals will be changed for this game, but it’s still going to come down to execution.

“I think obviously at the end of the day, both teams practice against something similar all through spring, all through fall camp,” Morris said “I think coaches do overanalyze and they worry about all that stuff. And so we’ve changed some signals, some words, some stuff that’s obviously going to be familiar to both sides, right? And so it’s all going to be about execution, right? I mean, they got good players, we got good players, and you got to go win some one-on-one matchups out there.”