One Bad Year on Fourth Down Prompted Eric Morris to Hit the Books Ahead of Dominant 2025 Run

STILLWATER — For all his well-earned accolades as a playcaller, Eric Morris coached one of the worst offenses on fourth down two years ago.

​But the head coach didn’t run from that failure. He chose to learn from it.

“It was something we really studied two years ago because I think we went for it more than anybody in the nation,” Morris said on Tuesday. “Now, when you really go back and study it, we weren’t very good at it.”

Morris was right. In the 2024 season, North Texas went for it 44 times and converted 47.7% of the time, which ranked 91st in the nation. It makes some sense that the more you go for it on fourth down, the lower ranked you would end up.

However, only four teams with 30-plus attempts ranked worse than North Texas, so an aggressive approach wasn’t the reason UNT didn’t rank higher. As Morris said, the Mean Green just weren’t particularly effective on those opportunities.

The same thing can’t be said about Morris’ group last season when North Texas finished the season ranked seventh nationally on fourth down with a 72.2% success rate.

“Last year, we were really, really good on fourth down as far as conversion rate, but we didn’t go for near as many as what we did two years ago,” Morris said. “Now, partly that was because we were a lot better on third down and just a better football team holistically.

“And so when you’re relying on fourth downs and going that much, I think that’s something where I just learned through the fire like that that wasn’t a positive thing.”

Morris is a little too critical of himself here. UNT still went for it on fourth down 36 times, which tied for 12th most in the country. So Cowboy fans can expect to see their offense stay out there a bit more than usual this fall.

For context, Oklahoma State went for it 24 and 26 times in the last two seasons, so that’s nearly one additional attempt per game at a minimum based on UNT’s numbers in 2025.

The very nature of the down suggests teams usually only go for it during important sequences, but UNT was especially successful when the team needed it the most.

In the team’s only two losses last fall, North Texas converted 3-of-4 times against Tulane in the 13-point loss in the American Conference Championship and 3-of-4 times in the 27-point loss to South Florida.

In North Texas’ 12 wins last season, only five were decided by 14 or fewer points. In those games, UNT combined to convert 9-of-14 times (64%) on fourth down.

It’s hard to make concrete predictions in the age of the transfer portal, but all of this could foreshadow several celebratory moments to come for the Pokes, considering they face four opponents who finished 103rd or worse at defending fourth down.

OSU 2026 FBS opponents ranked by 4th down defense conversion rate in 2025:

5th Texas Tech: 33%

35th Iowa State: 46%

T49th Houston: 50%

T49th Kansas State: 50%

59th Arizona State: 51%

62nd Tulsa: 52%

94th UCF: 59%

103rd Colorado: 61%

113th Oregon: 64%

117th Kansas: 66%

122nd West Virginia: 68%