‘It’s Still My Favorite Thing To Do’: Morris Doesn’t See Himself Giving Up Play-Calling Duties Any Time Soon

FRISCO, Texas — Oklahoma State’s 2008 win at No. 3 Missouri was a tentpole moment of the Mike Gundy Era.

That signature win has been remembered for a lot of reasons, one of which was Gundy sitting on equipment crates thumbing through his offensive play sheet while his defense was on the field. That was life as a play-caller head coach.

Two years after that win in Missouri, Gundy handed play-calling duties over to Dana Holgorsen and never looked back. In Gundy’s first season away from the program all this time later, the Cowboys again have a play-caller head coach.

Gundy was 43 when he gave up-play calling duties. Eric Morris is 40 (a man’s age) entering his first season coaching the Cowboys, and as he steps into his first year as a Big 12 head coach, he said he doesn’t see him delegating those duties any time soon.

“It’s still my favorite thing to do,” Morris said at Big 12 Media Days. “There’s nothing that still motivates me, keeps me involved in the game-planning, keeps my brain activated trying to come up with different ways to attack people on the offensive side of the ball.

“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, calling people. There’s not a ton of people (head coaches who call plays) left. That’s probably what Lincoln (Riley) and I talk about the most is are we saving enough time for all these different parts of the organization when you’re spending so much time calling the plays? I think you gotta hire good people that you trust to do some other things, but yeah, it’s what I love the most.”

There is more than one way to skin the proverbial cat, so it’s not as if one way is right and the other is wrong. Plenty of head coaches who don’t call plays have had success, just like play-calling head coaches have. Of late, it’s seemed like the in-vogue thing for NFL teams is to have a young, hotshot coach who also directs his team’s offense.

Morris made mention to Lincoln Riley as a guy he confides in about being a play-calling head coach. Morris was there for the genesis of Riley’s coaching career, as Morris was a player at Texas Tech as Riley worked his way up from student assistant to overseeing Morris as the inside receivers coach.

Having led the Sooners for five seasons, Riley isn’t all too popular in Payne County. Say what you will about Riley not having a national title ring on his finger, but he won four Big 12 titles in five seasons as the Sooners’ coach. So having success in this league in that architype is certainly possible.

Gundy’s transition into his program’s CEO felt natural, especially in his later years atop the program, but when that transition initially started to happen, he too noted his enjoyment of that aspect of the game.

“I don’t know that it’ll ever be easy to accept because I just like to do that,” Gundy said after Holgorsen’s hiring. “But I understand the role that I’m gonna play now.”

Who knows what the future holds for the Morris Era, but the plan is for Morris to continue to call plays, just as he did at Incarnate Word and North Texas as he climbed the coaching ladder.