Dabo Swinney reportedly bringing Chad Morris back as Clemson offensive coordinator after moving on from Garrett Riley
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Clemson's seven wins this season were its fewest since it went 6-7 in 2010, Dabo Swinney's second year as full-time head coach. Swinney is hitting the reset button, and he's reportedly bringing back the offensive coordinator who helped turn the Tigers into an ACC juggernaut.
After moving on from Garrett Riley, Clemson is hiring Chad Morris as its next OC, according to multiplereports. ESPN's Pete Thamel reported Saturday that the deal is nearing completion and pending Board of Trustees review on Monday.
Morris served as the Tigers' OC and quarterbacks coach from 2011-14. During that span, Clemson rattled off the first four of its 12 consecutive double-digit-win seasons.
Before that stretch, the Tigers hadn't won more than nine games in a season since 1990. From 2011-13, Morris oversaw a Clemson offense that featured quarterback Tajh Boyd, who's worked as an offensive assistant on Swinney's staff since 2021.
Boyd won ACC Player of the Year in 2012. That season, he threw for 3,896 yards and 36 touchdowns, plus he rushed for 514 yards and 10 scores, and the Tigers averaged 41 points per game to the tune of an 11-2 record, punctuated by a Chick-fil-A Bowl win over LSU.
In 2014, Morris' final go-around during his first stint as Clemson's OC, quarterback Deshaun Watson teased his potential. While the Tigers were riddled by injuries that season — Watson notably played on a torn ACL while Clemson snapped a five-game series losing streak to in-state rival South Carolina in the regular-season finale — they still won 10 games, and Watson hinted at what was to come.
Morris left for a head-coaching job at SMU, and the Watson-led Tigers made the national title game the next season. The year after that, they won it all.
As co-offensive coordinators, Tony Elliott and Jeff Scott filled the void left by Morris. Ironically, Elliott eventually became the Virginia head coach and just led the Cavaliers to their first-ever 11-win season with Morris' son, Chandler, quarterbacking the team.
Between 2015-19, Clemson reached four national title games and emerged as the final team standing in the College Football Playoff twice, first with Watson in 2016 and then with Trevor Lawrence in 2018.
Since, Clemson has fallen short of the promised land. Morris will be tasked with developing the Tigers' next quarterback.
They've received mixed results at the position over the past five seasons. DJ Uiagalelei had a roller coaster Tigers career before making stops at Oregon State and Florida State. Cade Klubnik piloted Clemson to a pair of ACC championship victories, the second of which vaulted the Tigers into last season's College Football Playoff. He entered this season with Heisman Trophy expectations and then regressed.
Riley didn't pan out as Clemson's OC after coming over from TCU following the 2022 season, during which his Horned Frogs offense proved potent en route to the national title game.
The Tigers averaged only 27.2 points per game in 2025, Riley's third and final season engineering the offense.
As for Morris, he posted a meager 18-40 record as a head coach across his three-year run at SMU and two-year stint at Arkansas.
He hasn't coordinated an offense since he was Auburn's OC in 2020. In 2023, Morris was back at Clemson as an offensive analyst.
This time, he's reportedly returning in a front-facing role, one he thrived in as the Tigers took off in the early 2010s.
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